In an interview on the Alkane website, Mr Chalmers said that clearly with the shorter the timetable and the larger the number of people on site at any particular time, the number of people needed could be as many as 400 to 500 people overall.

"The local towns of Dubbo, Parkes, Wellington and Orange are large enough to provide that level of work force," he said.

Alkane Resources is an ASX and (US) listed multi-commodity mining and exploration company with a focus on gold, zirconium, niobium and rare earths. 

Its projects are located in the Central West of New South Wales, in eastern Australia. 

Mr Chalmers also said key projects in the Wellington area are key to company's success.

"It's based very much around maximising the return from the projects already identified," he said.

"We maintain a small exploration program at present, particularly at Bodangora and Elsienora, which we believe have substantial upside. 

"The DZP is our primary focus as it's the really large, strategic project for us. We want to make sure it generates the returns we've outlined and ultimately start paying dividends to shareholders on top of the significant capital growth in share price we'd expect from successfully developing the DZP. 

"We have no debt, which is a pretty remarkable feat for a company of Alkane's size and we have always been conscious of trying to avoid diluting existing shareholders.''

Mr Chalmers said leases and financing were part of the way ahead for the Dubbo Zirconia project to move ahead.

"There are a couple of bureaucratic processes, such as getting the mining lease for which we have to provide a mine operations plan and we will also have to obtain an environmental protection licence," he said. 

"We've allowed around three months to get these two licences in place. The major step is financing and we've been putting a lot of effort into that working with Sumitomo Mitsui Bank and are making progress.''

Mr Chalmers says the project will be a strategically important one for Australia.

"The reason is the DZP is a very strategic project on a world scale and various companies are very keen to see the project proceed because our products are in high demand," he said.

"The project will provide multiplier economic benefits to the local community in particular." 

Mr Chalmers said he had mentioned the mining and environmental protection licences but the major priority was to get the first tranche of financing in the next few months. 

"The construction priorities will be predominately infrastructure such as roads, power and water supply and the target is to complete the overall project construction in 2017 with start-up hopefully by the end 2017 and first production early 2018," he said. 

"We've also allowed a three-year production ramp up whereby we might operate at 60 per cent capacity in year 1, 80 per cent in year 2 and 90 to 100 per cent in year 3. 

"Internally we're confident we can do better than that, but we're being typically conservative." 

Mr Chalmers said that the multiplier economic benefits would be substantial and it had been estimated that the project would inject about $AUD50 million pa into the local economy, $AUD10 million pa in state royalties and $AUD30 million in other infrastructure improvements. 

"Once in production the project will have 250 to 300 full-time workers on site, most of whom we expect to reside in Dubbo or close by," he said.

"It's a bit harder to predict the number of people who will be involved during construction as it depends on our final approach to the construction."