We should also look this september 2018 quarter for the evolution of this important item :
"payments to acquire property, plant, and equipment"
This thus far has been an important cash out-flow / spending drag on the company financial position. My understanding from my conversation with management is that the company should pay the landowners for access to their mineral sands resources (either by acquiring the land from them, or paying them for the right to mine the mineral sands).
It seems many land properties have been acquired by MZI in 2015-2016-2017 through leverage (in order to provide MZI with the necessary time to become cash flow positive) and now MZI should pay the bills, once the bills have been paid, the cash out-flow should decrease gradually in 2019-2021. This is the evolution of those payments (including investment to acquire equipment to optimize + expand production, so we do not have precise data on amounts of money paid just to acquire property from landowners in keysbrook, but better than no data !)
Note that of course when we acquire land properties they become "Assets" and we could sell the lands afterward (most likely at a lower price because we already would have depleted the contained valuable mineral sands in them , but for now we should pay for these and it is a cash-outflow. The mining and mineral sands processing equipment acquisition translates also to more "Assets" in the balance sheet, they have their own amortization and thus decreasing value but IMO most of the equipment would still be economically viable long after the project is executed especially at the Mineral Separation Plant (MSP) in Picton).
BREAKING DOWN 'Property, Plant, and Equipment (PP&E)'
PP&E are physical, tangible assets expected to generate economic benefits for a company for a period of longer than one year. Examples of PP&E include land, buildings, and vehicles. Industries or businesses that require a large number of fixed assets are described as capital intensive.
