Ann: Joint venture to propel Marillana into early production, page-40

And that was a nice premonition from end of last year given this morning’s announcement.

A quarter of a million dollars will be spent by EOFY and then the mine will finally be built .
“Upon satisfaction of the Farm-in Obligation, Brockman and MRL will form an unincorporated 50:50 joint venture which will proceed to develop Marillana.”

I figure the quarter of a million dollars would not buy all that much exploration and development in a previously unexplored site but Brockman already has a feasibility study.


And for anyone interested here is a refresher of the JV agreement that is now going ahead ;
As I understand it, (mostly from this thread) Marilana is a very well known, large, high grade iron ore deposit previously marooned by location.
The remoteness has, over many years, caused a series of false starts including a legal case with Fortescue in regards sharing it’s relatively nearby railway and a long term partnership agreement deal with BBI group that was never activated. This was superseded in July 2018 when Mineral Resources came up with a plan to get the development ball rolling which included accessing the site with its cost effective ‘in house’ light railway.

Here is the Australian Mining take on this from back in July 2018
https://www.australianmining.com.au/news/minres-and-brockman-to-form-300m-marillana-iron-project-jv/
“MinRes and Brockman to form $300m Marillana iron project JV
July 27, 2018News Ewen Hosie

MinRes is to spend $250,000 on exploration and development across the Marillana tenements and complete process design of the project’s processing plant, as well as finalise and optimise mine layout in order to acquire its half of the project.

Once the JV is finalised, Brockman and MinRes will co-operate on a 20 million tonnes a year (20Mt/y) iron ore export operation, with the potential to increase to 30Mt/y. The oepration is expected to cost upwards of $300 million, to be split down the middle between the two companies. MinRes will handle pit-to-port transport using its Pilbara light rail system to Port Hedland for shipping to Asia.

MinRes managing director Chris Ellison said that he was extremely pleased to enter into the agreement with Brockman and that the two companies had a “shared vision” for the future of Marillana.

Brockman chairman Kwai Sze Hoi said the joint venture was a “logical and welcome outcome”.

“This joint venture delivers all of the elements needed for the successful development of the wonderful Marillana orebody, including {MinRes’s} Pilbara project development and mining services capability and expertise,” he said.

“Brockman is confident that Marillana’s superior quality ore will take its rightful place in the seaborne iron-ore trade very soon.”

Possibly things will be a bit quiet over the next six months slthough we may see some slow price accumulation?
Need to fund $150 million of the development too ..,almost half current market cap...