tradie - I suggest you ignore the Ramelius acquisition of Apollo: in my view it was an aberration.
Not only was Ramelius goaded by Gold Road into paying way too much for Apollo the purchase was totally out of sync with the expansion strategy Ramelius had repeatedly declared commited to. Common sense says that $181m was overs for a unJORCed resources of 1.1m tonnes at 1.2 g/t with no mill. The silly talk on RMS threads now is that all Ramelius has to do is acquire a mill and another deposit to make Lake Rebecca commercially viable. And their strategy till now was to buy a stand alone project already possessing a mill and a viable resource.
If any proof is needed that Ramelius lost the plot is that St Barbara is paying only $157m for Bardoc, which has 3.1m tonnes at 1.8 g/t. And SBM already has the makings of a mill that will be able to handle both oxide and refractory ore.
The major problem for Breaker is that the collapse of Bardoc's plans to develop their project, due to shortages of labour, materials and capital, has spooked the sector. The option of building a mill is out of the question for the forseeable future. Peter Cook, with his Westgold hat on, is smart enough to go after Gascoyne's high performing Dalgaranga mill (though not smart enough to time his bid correctly) and he is also smart enough to monetise Manna while still keeping a portion of the potential of lithium and Manna. He needs a mill within haulage distance of Lake Coe. Let's see how smart and adaptable he is.
