Banter and general comments, page-38867

Thanks for the update. Minres will regularly look to remove costs across all its business divisions, that's part of how they remain a highly profitable mining and services operation.

From previous releases, Minres were operating the crushing plant for Core but there is no more ore on the ROM pad to crush. When a restart decision wasn't made at the end of the wet season, everyone could see the ore would run out around June. Even on optimistic near immediate restart decisions, there is no work for two+ months. Additionally, there really is no need for staffing the crusher until the DMS is restaffed and ready to process. An update like the one you note was likely.

Minres has a business structure involving Chief Executives for Mining Services, Iron Ore & Lithium. Paul Brown who is now the CEO of Core was the Chief Executive of Lithium (and before it was split Commodities) at Minres. He will bring that cost cutting alignment to running Core but in doing that, hopefully start to make Core into a mini Minres with strong share price appreciation over time. Those that think Core will keep on plodding along with a high cost structure burning cash should think again.

One of the interesting decisions that Paul will need to make is the way Grants restarts and the mining capacity assigned to the task. Mining the rest of Grants isn't easy because it doesn't lend itself to stable volumes of both waste and ore. Weather appeared to be an issue impacting the pause mining decision and will remain an issue for NT open pits for several months each year. While it creates other complications, one of the interesting options available is blitzing the mining of Grants. Core may not necessarily choose to immediately crush and process all the ore but getting all the ore out of Grants pit during a dry or drier period confirms to everyone that there will be a DMS restart at some point. It also takes away wet season and mining timing around the wet season issue. It provides clarity as to the volumes to process before BP33 needs to start. It enables use of high capacity mining gear that is therefore more efficient per ton shifted. It comes with an immediate cost but back-of-hand estimates indicate Core has the cash to make this choice.