d&d update 120310, page-3

Was it Brendan who was saying the Chinese were sniffing around this much earlier and NKP management wernt afraid to say so?

Imho the most pertinent article to date has been the one re Davis and Gilbertson turning the Platinum world on its head.

They are both chasing high grade,relatively shallow,cheap Ozs, and it could spell bigger problems for Anglo and Lonmin as they havnt been as pro-active in chasing these above 1000Mtr(in depth)deposits.

From all my recent research one thing is becoming glaringly obvious.This is not a cheap industry to be in with high capex and initial opex's for new projects and the recent credit issues only serve to magnify these issues.Even Davis has had to go the slower route in establishing Xstrata's foothold in PGM's as his reducing bids for Lonmin illustrate and his consequent abandonment(ftm?) of T/O's or mergers.

With other PGM industry pressures such as tougher restrictions on power usage and the associated coming higher costs there will be a natural progression to these shallower deposits,and one can even restrict these further to those that have multi-million Oz categorisation that will provide the operators with cost effective long term ops.

One can not deny that Garatouw seems to combine all these factors and if the eventual Tubatse BFS proves up similar potential over the total project length this project will be relatively unique in having 3 mines in close proximity that will allow a single managing entity to control well over 500K Ozs(and probably closer to 1M Ozs).If one takes a look at the other PGM majors ops they are spread throughout the Bushveld which has necessitated singular management structures at each mine.

I couldnt quite fathom why a major such as Xstrata would keep mentioning such a potential spec JV in their annmnts.Majors are usually very tight lipped about such projects.But its much clearer now and I guess Mick Davis is no shrinking violet.

Just one other major positive for this potential JV is that it was anncd right on top of the 10B Lonmin bid way back in 2008.It strikes me as illogical to annc such a JV in such a positive way unless one had serious development intentions and it was reported as having such potential by being stated as complimentary to Xstrata's T/O/merger aspirations.

d.