Wow this article is fantastic. Thanks very much for sharing it....

Wow this article is fantastic. Thanks very much for sharing it. I will make a cup of tea and read it again later. That is very interesting about the demand for AD in New Zealand. It makes sense when you think about it, that there really needs to be at least two AD plants -- one on the north island and one on the south. It sounds like the government is on-board too.

I think our venture in NZ should not have happened at all. If you set yourself up as a new builder, based in inner-Melbourne, and your first completed site is at, say, Footscray, you might take on work at Werribee or Dandenong as your second piece of work. You don't accept your second job in Horsham, and your third job in Albury, and try to co-ordinate it all from Melbourne as a new, inexperienced company. It is kind of what they've done except they've gone overseas. Geelong, maybe. You don't make things harder than they need to be. It's not like Olympic swimming where points are awarded for level of difficulty!

Having said that, absolutely DEL should be bidding for another EPC build in NZ and using its contacts and experience to leverage more work. "You can see what we've done in Reporoa. We want X dollars for another site, and yeah we're making a large profit on it, but we've proven ourselves reliable, so either we build it, or you take your chances with someone unknown. I hope DEL is pushing hard to obtain more EPC builds at favourable profit margins. We would have as much knowledge about the NZ business and regulatory environment now as anywhere.

Like a contributor said recently, with DEL the possibilities are binary: either we do really well, or become insolvent. I bit the bullet and, probably against my better judgement, picked myself up a very modest parcel this afternoon before the close of trade. In the process I dropped my average purchase price by 2.5 cents. Nice. Funnily enough, I put in an order "at market" and by the time my order went through, the price had dropped a little.

I am hoping that, absolute worst-case scenario, the BOOM sites fall through and we have enough work with projects like a possible second site in NZ, Brickworks, YV, and whatever else comes up. Air-tight contracts this time with lots of margin for error.

Thank you again for sharing that article. I learnt a lot from it.