I had a long and constructive conversation with Bryan yesterday. It was a 53mins and 3 secs phone conversation.
I was able to touch on all topics that I wanted to ask and push him on. The questions or topics I discussed and questioned Bryan on are:
- The 11mtpa production plan. Why 11mtpa, why not 5mtpa or 7mtpa or 20mtpa? What are the reasons behind 11mtpa? What did the specialists (Flinder Ports, resource specialist H & S Consultant, project management Jukestodd, mining consultancy AMDD,...) see and advise the company to target 11mtpa? Why they believe it is the best production option now with 11mtpa. What are the considerations regarding CAPEX and OPEX metrics that bring them to advise the company to choose 11mtpa?
- The slurry pipeline economics study and the Myponnie Point port are now selected as the best cost advantage transport and logistics options. Why? What? How?
- The processing plant economics optimisation. How important and how big is it in terms of expected CAPEX.
- The role of SA goverment in particular and NSW government, federal gov in terms of providing support to help this project up and running.
- LOI customers, how and when we expect some of them to sign off-take agreements with us.
- JV partner(s). When we do plan to bring them in. Do you now clearly see the vital all-important need to bring a JV partner in to get this project up and running?
- Resource: current resource of 481mil tons and further potential resource. Why we need to drill more holes in certain target areas to unlock closer to surface ore for mining start-off stage. Do we have enough data from previous drilling to be confident enough and to know enough of where to drill the next 10 holes?.....
- Are you staying with the company, learn from past mistakes or short-comings to do things better. To this, I get the answer from Bryan: "I am not going anywhere. I am not a quitter. I am unfazed by the opinion of shareholders who I understand are very upset at the moment, and the enormous job to bring this project to production. And people do not understand how complex this process of bring this project through current stage of BFS, funding, technical studies many seperate items".
- Why you failed to see and plan for a CR when sp was at 65c-72c? Do you now admit it was a failure on your part to do a CR at that time?
- Many more questions in that 53mins that I cannot remember all.
I have received many frank explainations from Bryan and I must say that it was the most constructive conversation I had with him. I have confidence he and his team will learn from past shortcomings and will do better job for us.
Looking forward to a "partner" to fund a BFS.
I encourage everyone who really want to invest in HIO to ring up Bryan and have a chat with him.
Have a good day HIO holders.
(20min delay)