Ann: Finniss Restart Study and Operations Update, page-57

Back when the December 2023 accounts came out Core had a $27.6m Onerous contracts liability. At that point in time the liability was $7.971m as a current liability and $19.611m as a term liability. The accounts didn't clarify who or why. The two obvious possibilities were something related to off-takes (or more accurately not delivering on off-takes) or the 10-year crushing services contract. I'm not going to search back in the HC posts but I'm pretty sure there was speculation at the time that it most likely related to the crushing services contract.

In the Dec 2023 accounts Core noted:


Fast forward a year to the December 2024 accounts and the Onerous contracts liability was $20.3m. Payments or events had reduced it by $6.3m, but the whole provision was now sitting in current liabilities. Core didn't have a bank debt, but it did have a liability to someone in a contract that somehow related to operations and that contract may well have had other hooks into Core's assets. Core was meeting accounting requirements with their disclosures but weren't being helpful to shareholders around understanding the cause and who the money may be payable to.

While the front page and main text doesn't reference CSI (or MinRes), the announcement links back to the 2nd May 2022 ASX release where Core awarded a crushing contract to CSI. Core's ASX release noted the award of the crushing services contract to CSI. Core's ASX release was light on details that a 10-year contract had been signed, however MinRes had a 3 May 2022 announcement that confirmed the award of a 10-year deal with Core. Back in 2022 BP33 was a smaller resource so this 10-year deal was going to hit problems if there were any implementation issues on BP33 or Carlton or Hang Gong (because at that point in time all 4 deposits needed mining to create 10 years of ore supply).

The 2nd page of the announcement of 27 March 2025 it noted:


Knowing MinRes's lawyers had created a 10-year contract, there will almost certainly be T&C's in this that protected their interests if the client company stopped production for anything beyond a short period. Its those probable shut-down T&C's that had Core continuing to make payments to CSI after they shut down operations and why this deal reduces ongoing costs. Core would appear to have mulled over the best course of action and reached an agreement that is primarily on MinRes's T&C's because there is little difference between the onerous contract provision and the $19.5m sum paid.

Its unclear exactly why Core had a reference to the 17 July 2024 Quarterly Activities report, but its probably due to this statement below that the ROM stockpile is now fully depleted and all processing activities are completed as planned. This statement most likely triggered T&C's within the crushing contract ultimately leading to outcomes like CSI removing the crushing plant or Core making significant payments to settle and close out the crushing services agreement.


Core decided to make payments rather than have an incomplete plant that would require installation of new crushing plant to be able to become operational. This would tend to indicate either Core had no choice around a smaller payment and losing the crushing plant from site or considered that a restart was in the sufficiently foreseeable future (for management) that retaining crushing onsite was the best option.