More strength in the Manganese price. The -5% price was...

More strength in the Manganese price.

The -5% price was US$4.86/dmtu indicating the current price is around US$5.92/dmtu. A >30% increase in price in a couple of weeks will do that!!

This price is into the range where E25 may be profitable even with its existing ugly cost structure created by sub-optimal equipment for handling high clay and having an optical ore sorter rather than a higher cost DMS unit that works on objects density rather than physical appearance.

Interesting question - If this increase is caused by problems S32 have, is it expected to last for a sufficiently long period of time that an earlier restart with the existing inefficient operation is now sensible?

E25 confirmed in their upgrade case that the existing grade was 29.7% so a circa A$200/t cost is A$6.73/t (USD4.38/t at 0.65). Manganese has a discount applied to lower grades and there are shipping costs. Those are likely to take the break-even price on existing inefficient economics without improvement for lower concentration product up to around US$5.50/t. With improvement tweaks not working, the mining pause was sensible. The price has now gone up sufficiently that back-of-hand calculations indicate an early restart may be profitable - if the expectation is that prices will stay around or above US$5.90/dmtu until Groote Eylandt is operational again. The risk is that these higher prices are a temporary reaction as customers secure product and they are over stockpiling so it doesn't last until Groote Eylandt's issues now expected to take a year to fix are resolved.