Ann: Quarterly Activities Report, page-201

Yep - I went back to the 2017 DFS and indeed the Tailings Retreatment capex was $200M + so I will concede that it isn't a low capex expansion now - I hadn't realized it had a Tin Fuming process plant and many ultra fine grind requirements. Obviously would be more $$ to build now than in 2017 but that is an expansion project that might become better as the mine itself gets older, the tailings dam bigger and the life of that project longer in a higher Tin price environment. Its certainly a more capital-intensive expansion project than the run-of-the-mill tailings retreatment stuff commonly seen in Australia.

As for the JV structure - it's historic but you can't deny that its interesting that it is puzzling why MLX would need its own marketing and shipping and contracts for offtakes when the JV partner is one of the largest players in the Tin industry, just seems like unnecessary duplication and relies on arm's length negotiations and dubious Chinese walls that are all really there just to avoid attracting attention of the FIRB.

@Ronzo101 has the right idea about the all-encompassing AIC's metric, it avoids the whole "sustaining" nonsense.

And @wb200 nails it with their comments, while shareholders in Australia guess about priorities and what motivates the board, there would be some people in APAC who would have much better information about future capital allocation than us, and that asymmetry of information, in a public company is probably part of the discontent with this situation. If Yunan Tin wanted to run a private business in Australia with Renison as the Tin Division of their business, then they should have taken it private, and delist it from the ASX rather than play the dance of a thousand veils with ASX corporate laws/tax and transfer pricing etc.