Hey Azzumah,
I believe that there are only economies of scale when you have two operations to combine. Rasp is a development project that was placed on ice by our Board earlier this year. Our Board has said it will cost another $121 million to develop before it even becomes an operating mine. Even combined, PEM and CBH do not have enough money for this so its just pie in the sky stuff.
The Chinese have said they are interested in PEM's Zinc offtake and they know that it is completely tied up until 2012. Given they are taking a position in 2008 for 2012 off-take (and one would assume they are after more than 1 year of offtake after that), they seem to be taking a fairly long term view of PEM's operations. This is actually very typical of Chinese, they have what is commonly referred to as "patient capital".
Unfortunately, I only hold CBH and think we are stuffed. In my virew, even combined both companies would be broke by 30 June unless they closed both Broken Hil and Endeavor. It doesn't make sense wwhen they have both significantly downsized in light of current economic circumstances to now increase their scale.
Just my opinion though, all the best.
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