dog on a chain, page-6

it's worthwhile to look at a few people and key events as a kind of review of the last 2 years.

i read brendan ryan all the time. he provided a lot of diagnosis at the time MLI was 'on the line' - that being around Q2 in 2008. miningmx and mineweb were great for a while but now that MLI is 'under the radar", the journos are not writing about it. there are bigger fish to fry.

brendan ryan quoted skeat as saying (about Bryan Frost) that you have to make the money before you can spend it. skeat was right - as it turned out.

in numerous quarterly reports BF openly lamented that Skeat had sold MLI a dud - that was the HVH circuit. roughly, they spent AUD15 mill acquiring it and it was supposed to deliver cash flow in 2008 to help fund the east rand and west rand simultaneous capex spends for plant refurbs. later, i estimate they spent (in vain)about AUD15 million on metallurgy trying to unlock the gold from the HVH circuit 'ore'. that, all up, sent $30 million down the gurgler. HVH was a dud and skeat had egg on his face.

here's another view i have. BF and RR were far too zealous with their co-development plans. they wanted the lot and they wanted it NOW. in setting the capex budget to refurb both east and west, they flew to close to the wire imho. if they had got the east side started first (as DRD were champing at the bit to do so)and let cash flow from there fund capex on the west side, i believe we'd be looking at a share price today in excess of $1. in the wash up MLI lost the elsburg tailings - a company-making tailings dump in its own right.

bring back BF?

well you can safely assume that when DRD pulled the swifty last june, BF would have activated all london contacts to save the ship. enter bluebay. BF is there in the background.

MLI was all the work of BF so assume MLI will move forward while BF is around. unfortunately he sullied his reputation with occasional 'porkies'. that's zeal for you when something's 'your baby'.