Ann: Appointment of Receivers and Administrators, page-66

Agree.

Investors who haven't followed the story from the beginning need to go back at look at it.

For those who don't know, Beyondie was the result of Smoothy flying geologists across his property to other mining projects, with those geo's seeding the idea of potash mining on the pastoral lease.
Hazelden was Smoothys mate and along with the other early directors, was ex-iron ore (the company that became BCI).

Smoothy and Hazelden formed a private company and used K-Utec to do the pre-IPO scoping work. K-Utec went on to do the pre and bankable feasibility. Of note Saskatchewan Research Council did the test work which was optimised by K-Utec. SRC peddled the same flowsheet with minor variations to most of the WA (failed) SOP companies. The work presented by K-Utec looked impressive.

It would appear the founders didn't have any relevant experience other than wider mining experience but they did try to engage leading experts. Whether or not the former East German company had much experience beyond potash mining in Europe is not clear.

I think the main criticism of Hazelden and co was the ambitious promotion of the financial model. But KLL was not alone. KLL had the lowest operating costs. Some will remember the very low transport costs. They used high SOP prices. They were also the only company to use a cut off brine grade.

Kalium was the first company to use the comparative project slides. Thereafter investor presentations became an arms race to promote the best WA SOP project. Those who promoted the most (generally KLL & SO4 but also APC) snared the biggest investors who in turn have lost the most money.

Of note, the expansion plan by Rudy can be viewed as highly questionable. I think compared to SO4, the management has been reasonably transparent about the plant situation. As a non-investor it was very clear the flotation/ schoenite conversion process was plagued with problems. Furthermore there were question marks over the level of crude salts being harvested. The lack of any mention of production costs, for nearly two years, was a concern.

Without doubt the board would have been fixated on the plant design working and the German guarantees. Not least because the SRC flowsheet has been sold to nearly every other WA SOP hopeful with the exception of Reward who are patenting their own process because they always viewed SOP flotation as being highly difficult (with flotation never being shown on their flowsheet for over a decade).

I think whoever buys Beyondie could end up buying a lot of scrap metal unless they know more than the Germans and Corey Milne consulting, both of whom have been involved and spent the last two years trying to ramp up this plant.

Commiserations to all investors. It should be noted that all investors in this sector have experienced financial losses because of the failures of SO4 and KLL. Fortunately the best days for WA SOP are ahead of us. The resource remains and investment theme is intact. Those projects highly dependent on NAIF funding with high capital costs and an unproven flowsheet will now languish. APC is dead. AMN will need to seriously rethink their plan.