I think the mood of the meeting was summed up by one of the...

I think the mood of the meeting was summed up by one of the first comments by MT, "...we will have a much more active 2013" and further comments made during the meeting about the "...lost nine months..." where insufficient funds were available to complete the plant, and one of the comments made during questioning, "... I am growing older and would like to retire and want to retire rich..." with the caveat that he will remain until it (implementations of the technologies) are finished.

The MD presentation initially started with a history of the Newcastle Iron Recovery Plant (NIRP) and a good explanation of why the changes were made to the design. The original sum of money detailed to Kronos of $12 million was an estimate of what it would cost to build the plant, at that stage no detailed design was available, to provide a more accurate costing.
Construction of the plant progressed steadily through 2011 but due the technical input from Kronos and in particular access via Kronos to the Aspen Plus technology (as per the AspenTech site, "Aspen Plus is a market-leading process modeling environment for conceptual design, optimization, and performance monitoring for the chemical, polymer, specialty chemical, metals and minerals, and coal power industries."), it was realised that changes were required to the plant for a number of reasons including that the original output estimates were not correct. It also gave the chance to ensure that the NIRP could demonstrate all the available technical developments to potential end users.

MT indicated that the technical relationship with Kronos is still very strong, which JW going to Germany for two weeks later this week.

It appears however, that the negotiations with Kronos for additional funding were hard. The Texas based financial headquarters additional funding options been; to be give the company away cheaply by placements or agreeing to a lien over the company, with restrictive conditions that if the costs exceeded budget, the company could be gone.

This explains the need to sell WIM150 and the introduction of Orient to the share register with a $2Mil placement well above market.

In response to a question, MT indicated and JW concurred that the funds from the sale of WIM150 is sufficient to complete the plant. From memory, I think it was said by MT that 90% of the plant equipment has been built or ordered and that the plant design is now frozen with has firm quotes for the outstanding equipment.

I was fascinated to hear that the briquette is worth between $2 - $3 million and cost APG about $110K.

MT outlined that Orient will be a strong potential partner in China for our technologies, and that this was what is needed to protect our intellectual property in that market.

As per the MD presentation slides an indication was given to some of the equipment cost to date, e.g $400k for the CO2 stripping, $150K for each of the three Liquid Ring compressors, $700K for the power supply etc.

It appears that APG has also been approached by a foreign company with an interest in a cooperative venture with APG to build Build Own Operate (BOO) plants. They indicated that they are interested to proceed now despite the plant not been finished but MT indicated come back next year when the plant is up and running and definitely proven. He indicated that they said it will cost more then, to which he replied that this is in the APG shareholders interest.

As indicated in previous releases by the company APG has been approached by overseas companies interested in the high purity synrutile that we could produce.

In an answer to a question MT indicated that the original EARS patent will expire next year but there have been many modifications since then and that a new patent is pending that will cover the next 21 years. The patent on the CLR still has 10 years to run.

Enigma13 has covered the discussion regarding the Nhill prospect in Victoria, and the start-up costs of the plant so I will not cover these other to say; MT indicated that the initial cash flow or lack thereof, at start-up is covered in the construction costs.

Overall I found the meeting more upbeat than last year despite the frustration of the last year, with the promise of a steady progression to a working plant at Newcastle.

Hoping that the indicated timeline is adhered to and that we have a working plant next year.