apg ann...profits to commence...! , page-20

Hi Tewks, Lekki, Greybeard et al,

I've finally had a chance to absorb the quarterly report (sorry it took a while, I'm busy). After browsing through the plethora of opinion that poured out on HC after it's release I've come to the conclusion that people are a little impatient for things to happen. I can understand that but I think the info in the quarterly didn't deserve to raise the angst it did.

My take is that APG said in December they hoped to have the pickle plant upgraded and operating before June and making profits by the end of the year and now they have done the sums more fully and said it will be fully operational after six months of upgrade which they aim to start before March. The June date has slipped to perhaps July/August but profitable production is still before the end of the year. A small change but greeted with howls unfortunately.

The other unknown is when the testing will come back on the synrutile. It would have been nice to have results now but that’s out of the company hands so we can only wait. That one interests me the most right now.

As to the gold, it was definitely out of left field in the fact that it hasn't been mentioned for a while. Maybe the intro could have been done better so it didn't jar so much. If you know the company you know that Mike Smith, the geologist associated with Austpac is always poking about somewhere looking at different opportunities. He's never not active and there will probably be another China Gold update at sometime when he's kicked part of that along further. I wonder if he has dug more up from Austpac's aeromagnetic files (this opportunity has been known about for a little while) or they felt the need to put a bone out for the hungry shareholders calling for any morsel of news. Probably a bit of both.

I think the problem for Austpac was they had to put a quarterly out and had to put news in it so most of it was repeating the current position. Previously when they haven’t had some sort of update in a quarterly they've been heavily criticised. Now they did do an update (on lean information) and they were heavily criticised. At least they know what to expect.

Cheers

Seik

ps i am dissapointed with the share price but neither I nor most shareholders or the company can control that (I hope) so I just have to be patient, I think Austpac has made me a Zen master at patience!!