Good little lesson, thanks Mainholm.
I'd like to add something that I've mentioned before, TK had the opportunity to drop us during the LOI stage. I understand they were practically beseiged and begged by some of our potential competitors to do the deal with them, with the resulting TK comment that they wouldn't be undertaking a LOI process whereby they announce their name publicly again.
As annoying as it must have been for TK, it's been an excellent endorsement for our TanzGraphite. Many other ASX (and TSX) companies made contact with TK, and TK would have had a multitude of graphite samples sent to them, from all over the globe. During that extensive process (9 months or so), they didn't just end up saying a big "YES" to our TanzGraphite, but they also said an emphatic "NO" to every other sample that they would have seen (I'd love to see some of our competitors put out an announcement that says "we tried to do a deal with TK, and they didn't like our graphite). My point is, TK aren't a stupid business, so if a competitor was offering them a better product at cheaper cost, they would have taken it. They would have found plenty of cheaper inferior product, but none that met their specifications. I don't know the geo side that well, but I do know that TK know steel and refractories. They know what they wanted, and they chose our TanzGraphite above every single other potential supplier on the market.
Like I said, I don't know geo that well, but I do know business. TK's off-take conversion to a binding agreement is just as important for what it doesn't say, and that is that they had plenty of other opportunity to purchase other graphite, and not a single other one stacked up as well as our product.
And that quality is the reason that two European (German) companies are now committed to binding off-takes with KNL, which then leads to the German Govt approving an in-principle guarantee to assist our financing.
I'll add one other prediction too. At some point either very soon, or once our funding is formally approved, there will be a couple of German analysts who follow ThyssenKrupp, who will cotton on that KNL is also listed on the Frankfurt bourse, and that KNL's business model is in large part assured by the strength of the TK off-take (and German Govt guarantee). The fact that they can recommend their own clients to buy our shares in Frankfurt is going to be a massive tick for us. I think (I might be wrong here) we currently have around 5% of our shares held in Frankfurt. As we ramp up production, that percentage will rise. And every single share that is bought in Frankfurt, is taken away from the ASX (unless they sell it back). The ASX listed shares are going to get tighter and tighter.
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