I agree insofar as that question handled clumsily. My read was that they have not talked to anyone in government yet. But they way he answered it was just a bit lackadaisical. The part of the response around the Government having other priorities eg energy was probably fair, but only to a point. Governments have several agencies all with specific remits. The Food Safety/security and, or agricultural agencies are not going to be spending time sorting out access to Germany's wider access to energy. They will be focused on ensuring their sectors can operate effectively and the German people access sufficient primary produce ie food, and products that enable that production (fertiliser!).
I would expect their are doors that would open if SHP knocked. Having said that, prior to now, what were they going to turn up with? I would not expect the Government to have an interest without some sort of evidence to support their case for Government interest/funding. We have it now. Really, it is a matter of timing ie when the funding is needed vs what any time frames might be to secure Government funding. I have been involved in private/public partnerships before and the Government due diligence certainly takes time - with good reason; it is public money and open to media scrutiny and so on. I hope the SHP management team are factoring these timeframes/processes into any plans. Additionally, they should be targeting communications at German primary producers who rely on fertiliser to lobby Government. This is what I was alluding to in an earlier post about marketing.
Finally while hammering away, one thing I meant to mention earlier; on the call yesterday, one of the brokers (sorry can not remember who) said the with numbers like that (referring to SS) he did not think they would have any trouble securing a quality CE (paraphrasing). Hopefully someone else can validate that
@HeliosUK or anyone else? It would be good to get that monkey off our back sooner than later.
Cheers
KK
