I dunno, I'm nonplussed. It is almost as if Mark Z wimped it....

I dunno, I'm nonplussed. It is almost as if Mark Z wimped it. Here he has been, for over a year, talking about stepchange growth to take Ramelius up to the next rung of gold producers and what did he end up doing? Playing safe by seemingly buying a future replacement for his existing mining centres. How long to develop Apollo into a producer? At least 3 years, maybe. How much would it cost? Maybe between $150m to $200m? Plus developing Edna May stage 3 is another $150m. Not a lot of room left for any other initiatives by Ramelius in the next few years. What we see now with Ramelius may well be all we see with Ramelius for the forseeable future.

I can almost sympathise with m0ngy and Mr ... - well, no, not him - who is spitting chips with Ramelius for not having a crack at the 70% of the Youanmi project that Rox owns. Youanmi ore can be monetised quicker and more cheaply by hauling it to the Checkers mill at Mt Magnet. Or if Mark Z wants to have a go at developing a greenfield processing centre he could whack a mill at Youanmi for a third processing centre. But that was never the plan. So this Apollo announcment is a bolt from the blue.

Mark Z may end up with an operational win here by picking up Apollo for a bargain but strategically I reckon he has destined Ramelius to remain in the bush leagues. I might have to stew on this deal for a while to make any sense of it.