Hey Peppie, great post but no I haven't been following Tormin...

Hey Peppie, great post but no I haven't been following Tormin closely for a while.

"Tormin has provided a huge amount of feed to the world market for 7 years, but is there a question mark on that moving forward?"... to be fair there were long periods when GMA left them hanging and stockpiles grew before everything was resolved (and that was before covid hit). My point here is that global garnet demand seems to vary a lot over the economic cycle, because when those Tormin tonnes didn;t ship nobody noticed.

Moving forward Tormin will be either feast or famine me thinks. They have great exploration upside along strike and inland with the eastern strand, just did a deal on new lease to the south that looks a no brainer to add to the extra resources north of the mine. The environmental group has accepted Tormin's plans to access, manage and rehab new mining areas, cancelling the legal challenge and apparently seeing reason? If they can get the capital to develop a large plant and better better product spec I can't see any reason they can't get back to better profitability. You follow that story much closer than me, is their something going on that would prevent mining expansion into the new areas?

"GMA appear to have brought forward and exceeded the offtake agreement and it’s only 6 months in. (Jan-dec).Now there could be a few reasons1. They needed it due to shortages.
2. They may not take anymore for the year.or
3. They grabbed it now to keep MRC tormin operating and (solvent) also buy them some time to get it together."

The obvious and simple explanation is GMA are also making a motsa selling garnet at record high prices into a global demand and re-stock boom. Just like the ilmenite, zircon, rutile, base metal guys etc etc. High prices incentivise new supply any which way right. Possible they just trying to keep the cow alive to keep milking, at Tormin's request but probably no biggy for GMA. Agree R/C is ugly and only looking better due to over-sized garnet sales from stockpiles.

"2. Question marks on GMA’s Port Gregory.Much of their current mining is within very high grade areas, but many are convinced those days are well past. Are they set up for lower grade, how much of a drop off will there be on production and do they have enough land and will it be profitable?"

That I don't know but interesting rumour... hate it when private companies don't have to lift their skirt like those on the ASX. Obviously if they haven;t scaled up for lower tonnes some cut to supply, though that would seem rather dim witted. Relatively cheap and easy to up the wetplant size to match falling grades with very small increase in opex, dry plant stays the same with same HMC delivered form WP. If they run out of ore reserves while HVY picked up projects next door then they deserve to take a hit.... TO HVY?

The two projects in Sth Island of NZ are worth keeping an eye on. Very high grades of garnet (almandine) and ilmenite (plus a bit of zircon and gold added in). Locals are all coming on board now from what I hear, landowners not included in current mine knocking down doors to try and get in front of the mine path. Transport to port is the biggest killer, certainly no guarantee.

Interesting, might have to do some more digging, Good luck.