re: easy 150% and guess the major! Boy I think HC needs to...

re: easy 150% and guess the major! Boy I think HC needs to change the batteries, its slower than a telstra dial up connection.

Einstein you do get excited, this is APG mate, slow down, or the board changes you hope for might be achieved by some of the old ones reading this and having a turn.
You set a simple challenge re the major Einstein, there really only two OS majors playing with BMX, Nisho and Cristal. I'd guess you were guessing at Cristal as they have always had an interest in Austpac from early on though I didn't know they'd got dudded in the Bemax merger. Shirfan only joined the board in February and Cristal were going to end up with 27% of the merged group and I haven’t heard of any change to that. Still I'd guess Cristal rather than Nisho, though I haven’t seen or heard any moves by them yet in regards to austpac.

In regards to Goro I heard that the decision to stick with the standard process was due to new technology concerns. The normal route uses sulphuric acid and their new process uses hydrochloric which was made even more effective by the EARS process, but such a large change on a huge project like Goro gave a few engineers cold feet. Legitimate fears I think even if the process was more efficient and gave excellent results at pilot plant stage. Other nickel projects coming a cropper on new technology is probably the cause for caution rather than politics.

Anyway with Goro dropping out and BHP, aka Bluescope keeping commercial confidentiality, I thought this would slow APG’s progress to the same old, same old i.e. lots of waiting…. this time while the BFS and funding was chased. If you are right and the likes of Cristal is going to put their stamp on the Australian mineral sand industry by having such a large a stake in the Bemax/Sons/Nisho Murray Basin merged assets plus put their foot on the only technology that makes the Murray basin illmenite saleable by funding APG then maybe (and that’s a big maybe) it might happen a bit faster. I won’t hold my breathe, though I’m still very confident in the long term future of Austpac, they or the sands industry just seem to draw things out for too long. I hope your enthusiasm has real roots, I look forward to more info.

As an aside I’ve heard the proposed Lurgi process hasn’t performed to expectation by a long shot, though thats been expected for a long time. I wonder what they will do with their Douglas projects chromium contaminated ilmenite now? That might stir the possum in their board.

Cheers

Seik