sellers???, page-8

re: sellers???kg Youve noticed Gip seems to be marking time on the Aim market as well KG.Insomnia prevails,at least for a few minutes through bleary eyes,to have a quick look at it on the Aim just in case JT has decided to let the Aim market know prior to the asx re something important such as finance,however I doubt he'd do this.

Imo the annmnts this year have only strengthened the likelyhood of Abu D start-up and even Tas seems to be hinting that they may just have a reasonable chance at getting this going as of late as he has refused to outrightly dismiss the project.

So what have we had this year.

Well lets go back just one step.The end of 2004 brought us the first Bfs,then the second Bfs in which it was hinted that an off-take customer/s had persuaded Gip to up the project output quite substantially from 1.26Mtpa to 2 Mtpa.This pretty much told market right from the word go that the first Bfs was just a base line scenario that didnt include some of the more likely production demands such as a higher possible tantalum demand and the forgotten half of possible project revenue,the feldspar.

But back to the beginning of 2005.This brought a flurry of activity for Gip.The first was the confirmation of the sale of the first 5 years of tantalum production via an actual signed off-take contract with one of the 2 major tantalum consumers.

Now it was not overly hard to put 1 and 1 together to come up with the much implied major American major tantalum consumer as Gip's off-take customer after they had decided to cancel one of their large ongoing long term off-takes with SoG of which the amount required in the contract was almost to the ton what was previously needed in the cancelled SoG off-take.Add to this our detective work on that large off-take customers recent admissions that it had been stockpiling tantalum as a buffer to several possible tantalum supply chain problems and you come up with why there has been no hurry for Gip to get Abu D to start-up,much to our frustration!

Another little sweetner right on top of the off-take contract was the 5% royalty abolition which suddenly brought payback for the project to under 4 years.This essentially showed,not that we really needed any confirmation of the fact,that the Egyptians were as keen as anyone to get this project happening,and for the effective profits to start accumulating post payback asap.This emphasises one of the strengths of having your host country as a major stake holder in such a project in that it seems to motivate them into a much higher level of co-operation than would otherwise be apparent.

Since these two major positives for the project we have heard little re the tantalum project apart from the odd comment re finance negotiations.There has been some surface activity at Wadi Allaqi which confirms what was almost taken for granted,that there is still a high likelyhood that the ancient/artisan miners hadnt picked this region clean of the Pharonic gold.

However it looks as though our waiting may be coming to a head KG with one John Dunlop appointed to the board.A juicy appointment when one thinks about it.From all accounts a bit of a maverick in his earlier days,but one would think that as he gets a little longer in the tooth(sorry JD if you read this-doubt he would though)that he would want to become involved in something a little more conservative in nature,and one cant get much more conservative than the tantalum industry.Much more importantly add to this that JD would have a fairly intimate knowledge of the plant design requirements due to his earlier involvement in the Bfs and the synergies of the appointment begin to crystalise.

The last important little piece of the puzzle has been the completion of the EIA with some interesting attached comments re the fact that it has been done to WB/IFC guidlines.These comments may or may not imply anything but it does give the project the highest environmental qualifications which can once again,only enhance Gip's chances of attaining the 80% debt finance they are after.

It has been a long road for one and all so far KG.I think I took a formative holding in the stock about a year ago via some options,more than likely motivated by your insatiable little buying spree sub 4c at around the same time.I had traded in and out of Gip earlier in the piece but was at that stage doing a bit of sort term stuff,which only proved to me that I was good at loosing substantial paper profit when involved in this type of trading.

It may seem like a long road for us but I suppose when you are running a company on your own which has its major interests in the Eastern Egyptian deserts and your major shareholders/possible financial contributors are at either end of the globe,not to mention the forgotten half of the project re feldspar and having to keep ones ear to the ground on these supply markets and other possible opportunities,then one can see how time would seem to go quickly for JT and slowly for us who are sweating on every little Gip tid bit.

I suppose all one has to do is take a look at how quickly things move in your own line of business when running things on a management level.Relative time seems to rocket by with little time to complete what one has to.

As far as your(and mine!)options go KG I think if we think along the lines of just how many JT has and what he would want from them come expiry I would say that what Gip mentioned in the last couple of annmnts re the escalation of activity in the next few months is a good pointer.

I dont know about you KG but Ive always had this impression from Gip annmnts that finance was going to be there when needed.This latest comment re project activity escalation only adds to this as it assumes further project development which can only happen if the project goes ahead,and that assumes that finance will be forthcoming.But then this may just be positive company rhetoric and perhaps we should keep our feet on the ground a little more as per one Tastaga.

One should never assume such things in the world of speculative stocks I suppose.But then if we didnt would have we invested in the first place;-)

Now I'm fully awake.I'm blaming you KG!

Might go and have a look at the cricket.Hopefully the Aussies have knocked over a few more Pomms but the way that pitch was playing it looks like the Pomms could get 1000.

Cheers,d.