My scanning for Utah Point, South West Creek and Marillana/Opthalmia came up wth these comments :
Main Presentation:
…. “We've got two big supply chains that run through the Pilbara and down here in the south and there's a combination of big off highway trucks, trains and on highway road trains.
Without doubt the biggest hauleys in the world when it comes to number of trucks on the road and off highway, and tonnes moved with rubber.
So there's probably a couple of good opportunities we're looking at putting to bed externally.
And then over the next three years the Mining Services part of the business is going to be adding some Next Gen crushing plants through Ashburton and then later through the South West Creek Hub……….. ………
…………. … Then South West Creek; look, it's basically awaiting the government to announce what the channel and port allocations are for the inner harbour.
We're hoping to be successful on that. If we are, on both those projects, we'll be making announcements probably between now and the AGM. At the AGM we’ll be able to give you an awful lot of colour about where they're at and where they're heading…”
Analyst Questions:
Thank you. We will now return to the phone questions. The next question is a follow-up from Lyndon Fagan from JP Morgan. Please go ahead:
Lyndon Fagan: Thanks for that. Just on the South West Creek berth I was hoping to gauge your level of confidence on being awarded those. You mentioned there was a couple of - well there might be more to say in the next few months - are you able to share what those milestones are, how many other players are in the mix, to try and win that access?
If you are awarded access, how ready is that project and whether you’re willing to share capital intensity? I suspect not. But I figured I’d ask…….
Chris Ellison: …….Then on South West Creek, look there’s not a lot I can say on that. I can’t - there are obviously all of the users of the Inner Harbour and Port Hedland would like to increase their channel allocation. So there’s two things out there. There’s the allocation in the channel and how many tonnes you’re allowed to ship out per channel.
They are chopped up into A and B class and then D class are basically just tonnes that you can get through being efficient.
So we can’t give any indication on anything until we know, a) if we’ve got access to the berth or we get the right to develop them.
Then secondly how much channel allocation we actually get. That could be anything from zero to 50 million tonnes.
So once we understand the volume that we can get, we can then determine how many tonnes per annum are going through there and what the capital cost is to get them delivered.
So we’ve sort of got most of that figured out. But it just depends wholly and solely on what we are able to get, if anything.
But our level of confidence, up there, on being able to get something is extremely high.
It was originally those berths in South West Creek were in 2008, set aside as we all know, for junior miners so that we can, a company like us can, one day become a major.
So our level of confidence is extremely high.
Lyndon Fagan: Thanks. If I could just squeeze another one in, on Utah Point you’ve got 14 million tonnes that you could use there. What’s the bottleneck preventing you from being at that run rate in FY22? Thanks.
Just the COVID virus.
…….. Your next question comes from Matthew Frydman from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Matthew Frydman Yes, sure. Thanks. Morning Chris and team.
A couple of questions. Firstly, I guess the capital guidance you've given across the commodities business, $140 million in growth capital for FY22. I'm guessing part of that is maybe the expansion of Wonmunna. You also mentioned replacing the haulage fleet in Yilgarn. Was there any other key projects you wanted to highlight in that bucket?
Hi, Matty. The answer to the first question is we’re also looking to open up other areas up in Utah around Lamb Creek for example over the next 12 to 18 months, so that’s a key part of the strategy going up there. We also have some spend earmarked, developments and drilling and so on around Marillana, Ophthalmia, so that’s up in that part of the world.
That might not be in order and there might be other relevant comments too.
Cheers
BCK Price at posting:
4.1¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)