from andrew drummond

Hello all,

I posited an idea a couple of days ago r.e building slurry pipelines. Here is the mail to and from MAK..

"Dear Sirs, I am a MAK shareholder and also involved in pipelines. I noticed a lot of the share discussion forums were concentrating on the cost of moving the resource to market (e/g Mt Isa or Darwin). I wonder if consideration had been given to a slurry pipeline to Mt Isa. I think the cost is significantly less in both capital and ongoing costs. I don\'t think it\'s unfeasible, as the phosphate could be slurried with water from either end, the linepipe steel could be treated for phos resistance, and not run at pressures likely to induce stress cracking. Just a thought from a shareholder :)

cheers
*name removed to protect the innocent* "

and the answer..

"Hi *etc*,



Thanks for the query and comments follow.

We have not thought of a slurry pipeline to Isa as that would only apply if we wanted to get in to the fertilizer manufacturing business. We would need the capital to build the pipeline at $1-1.5M/km, depending on whether we had return water or not, and a fertilizer plant (construction cost estimated at USD 4000/t of installed capacity) and then have to get the product to the coast from Isa for export. That is for the very big boys.

Similarly, slurrying to Tennant Ck would also be prohibitively expensive. Our plan to truck/rail to Darwin is up a bit on operating cost compared to slurrying but wins hands down on capital.

Cheers

Andrew Drummond "

What a top reply, and top response time...confidence lifted to the Nth degree!!!!! Feel a bit daft about the smiley in the original mail though :)