Some interesting thoughts there, some of which I agree with and...

Some interesting thoughts there, some of which I agree with and others require more explanation. However they are a good launching point for some more detailed examination.

The first thing that jumped out at me was that the administrators could find no buyers for the existing operations at almost any price, so they have made the call that there are more gullible people out there already trapped in this, and newcomers who think they are getting to the front of the queue. This is all with the theme that everyone talks about increased copper prices, and investment apetite in copper, but when the rubber hits the road there is no investment appetite for copper at all, especially in an operation that has had challenges before.

The second thing that struck me was looking after unsecured creditors and then leaving secured creditors in the same position as they are now, they could simplify the entire process and cut out the middleman and just give people the BSB and account number of Tembo and Regal and they could deposit their funds directly to the champagne and sports car slush fund of Tembo and Regal. Personally, I think the guys in charge of Tembo and Regal already have enough money and enough experience in making "heads I win, tails you lose" arrangements and nothing I have seen lately would indicate that this behaviour has changed. The main risk here is obviously that the recapitalisation process happens and then Tembo/Regal pull the rug again, at the most inopportune time usually.

Can we also most importantly have new good competent management, see AIC for an example of how to keep a problematic high-cost copper mine in production while they do the necessary M&A and then expansion/exploration to add to mine life, all of these things executed perfectly by management of AIC. And lets fire all the rogues/dead weight/dead wood even if that means pissing off some of the citizens of Cloncurry, even if that means going FIFO to access a higher quality workforce and attract higher quality professionals.

For anyone prepared to drop $50-$60M into an explorer they will have to consider a few things:

1. While I agree with the principle and idea that restarts should be completely unencumbered by debt, and in control of their own destiny, this is a fair lump of money that will either attract an opportunistic takeover for the cash value or a tempting amount of money for management to do something stupid with, like further M&A while they drill. Also got to consider they will be competing for drilling and exploration resources against all the other Mt Isa area copper explorers and there is only a limited amount of expertise and industry infrastructure to support massive exploration programs in the area, and they will all do when the copper prices are high, and they will all suffer the subsequent cost over-runs.

2. I agree with the idea that they need to prove a large resource somewhere to give them a long mine life and a path to multi-year production, the common theme of failed single operation companies is insufficient cash and a short mine life where they are always scrambling to live hand to mouth, all you need then is an inopportune bushfire/flood/geotechnical problem/major plant breakdown/grade control issue or <insert unexpected hiccup here> and the whole thing falls over.

3.@Rupert001 has already covered Vero / Mt Oxide and this is a prime geological target and could be a major upside, unfortunately it has some historical legacy issues and maybe the new State Government might be more amenable to getting something happening however this will require some time and drilling to possibly create a potentially company making discovery. It was very neglected by Perilya and hasn't seen proper exploration for quite a while. There will be other targets and brownfiels exploration that can be done closer to their existing plants at Cloncurry, these also will need some capital spent on them to make them reliable and efficient.

4. Lets have no more "Trust me 'bro" offtake agreements with Glencore, just concentrate on getting an asset into production with either ore or concentrate available on the open market and let Glencore come to them, after all - if management are at all bullish about the price of copper (which they should be otherwise they should close the doors now) then in the future its going to be the miners and concentrate producers who will have the upper hand in negotiations in the future, so no point giving away all the upside to someone like Trafigura or Glencore - they are already rich enough living in their castles in Switzerland, the idea is to make money for TNC shareholders and not make more money for commodity traders.

5. There are some possible JV and business opportunities in the Cloncurry Mt Isa region with lots of other small players either in administration, or just out of administration, or explorers with stranded assets of either copper oxide or copper sulphide orebodies without a mill, and other with a mill but with no ore feed (e.g. Chinova's Osborne operation), time to rationalize and make deals to get mills constructed on granted permitted/ mining leases in geographically logical places to utilize the existing infrastructure where possible. Everyones's share price has been smashed and unresponsive to the rising copper price so with share prices suppressed across the board, whether they are good successful explorers and developers or lazy lifestyle co.s there are opportunities for a rationalization for the people who can act decisively. No point having 20 or so disparate stranded orebodies all in the ground forever if no one can swallow their pride and make some commercial deals to get the copper out of the ground profitably.