CATL to build electric car battery cell factory in Thuringia, page-90

Hi Tony, I would gather it's some local family type companies that cannot afford their own processing plants that may be looking to send graphite ore there. I can't see anybody else wanting to send their graphite ore to such a remote location and then send the final products all the way back to port.

Not sure what ASX companies are down that way, perhaps WKT and VRC?, but they all seem to have better access to port than MNS. Think WKT already has some of its long lead items on standby order, so doesn't sound like they are too interested (perhaps @Croc-file would have a more detailed perspective on this from WKT perspective on whether they are likely to send ore to be processed at Nachau) and VRC are in process of raising funds via a notes issue to purchase their stage 1 processing plant, so again doesn't sound like they are interested in sending ore.

So I am sort of leaning to some small scale local companies sending their ore to be processed to save them having to have their own plant?

Anyway, wasnt the Nachau plant going to be operating a full capacity to meet MNS needs? Though perhaps the lack of Off takes has freed up a fair whack of capacity and if they can't export concentrate then well basically the plant is probably going to be fully idle from what I can see based on current Off takes.

So perhaps processing for some local companies may have some benefit?


Anyway, whilst I have you, re these Special economic Zones (SEZ), I sort of think of them as industrial parks to attract foreign investment. Somebody normally develops the parks, you know their responsible for making all the roads, getting gas pipelines in, connecting electricity, providing security fencing etc. Then their are those that simply operate within the park. So the developers licence is to develop one of these parks, probably costs a lot of money to develop so developers would get some good tax concessions on the developer activities. Eg leasing land/buildings within the park that they developed.

From what I can gather based on the tax concessions they claim MNS seem to have a developer licence to develop one of these parks, one assumes so others can operate in them if they so chose and get the necessary Operater licence and from what I can gather the zero corporate tax rate only applies to developer licences, not operator licences. Is that your understanding and if so do you have any figures on what it costs to develop one of these parks or SEZ? I would imagine it's a lot of money as can see the Tanzanian Govt giving such concessions otherwise. Like just getting gas and electricity to such remote area must cost a lot just for those two items.

The other thing I was wanting your thoughts on is then let's say the "developer" of the park wants to operate a factory within the park. For these activities would they then also need an operator licence, ie to operate within the park and would the different tax concessions (operator licences don't entitle zero corporate tax from what I can gather) apply to those operator activities?

Hopefully somebody like @sroyle can throw up the activities that were allowed under the MNS licence that were outlined in that clarification notice from the Tanzanian Authorities, I just can't remember seeing whether it stated the could operate a graphite plant under the licence in question, recall it mentioned a lot of "development" type activities,

Anyway, thanks for your time and look forward to your thoughts on some of my questions.

All just in my very humble opinion as always