Ann: Reinstatement to Official Quotation, page-57

I'm glad I responded to your question as a genuine question and thanks for your polite reply. Often easier to assume the best in a poster's question and reply genuinely rather than just assume the worst.

In answer to your points, yes I should have been clearer that the MLX restart was more focussed on re-opening the sulfide mine and milling sulfide ore, which has some mining/geotechnical and cost challenges. Obviously, you are more interested in the oxide and SX/EW possibilities and you have made a reasonable case for that in your post.

I think @littleblackduck has covered the oxide SX/EW stuff better than I ever could but on reading your reply I was wondering what my concerns were about the oxide leaching and stockpiles and I went back into my old records and spreadsheets with pro's and cons and sure enough I had some question marks next to clay content & shale host rock/pugging/acid consumption and the mixed nature of the various oxides/supergene ore. His post is an excellent primer for those unfamiliar with all the combinations and permutations of heap leaching and SX/EW.

I take your point about the reasons for CYM's financing failure with the state of the capital markets and the way in which the restart study was done & the bond issuer changing the terms at the last minute, that really sucked. Obviously, with such a legacy operation/site - there are a number of restart possibilities that all need to be studied by a highly competent interdisciplinary team of geologists, metallurgists, and mining engineers to run the numbers on how all these different options will work/be technically feasible, which ones are low cost vs high cost etc etc And even then - with heap leach its often an iterative process of learning on the job by experimenting with different material,different amounts of acid and many other variables that are only found out once serious testwork or even early stage production commences.

In answer to your TNC questions - yeah the sulphate production is pretty small, and the exploration that they are doing is early stages so (again) I have a small holding. No one sane is betting their mum's house on stuff like this. I'm treating them more as a small explorer and potential developer so a potential swing producer in a decent jurisdiction (i.e. in this case QLD)

I agree with you that the cost curve for copper producers must steepen for a variety of factors that we probably both agree on such as slow permitting, Chile issues of rising labor costs and falling mine head grades, resource nationalism, lack of investment in mine capacity, increased copper smelting capacity in relation to concentrate/blister/metal supply.