Based on this response I assume the usual suspects are whining away, thinly disguised as legitimate questioning of company announcements.
Here's a company announcement:
http://www.ectltd.com.au/developing-fit-for-purpose-coldry-pellets-for-key-markets/
It obvious to anyone with eyes to see that ECTL have a process that can be tuned to the requirement of the downstream user. If there is a great deal of handling involved the they can produce a much more robust but slightly more expensive product. If cost is a key factor they can produce a less intensively processed product that has less physical integrity but has cost advantages.
If you have a mine head Coldry plant directly feeding the boiler conveyor belts of a Power Plant, or feeding them via a single intermediate bunker, you probably want to use the lowest cost settings of the plant - just enough to let the product reach the destination at the required density for use in a boiler.
If you have an integrated Coldry Matmor plant you may require a different setting - maybe two intermediate bunkers involved, maybe a large retort requires a denser feed mix. Not a problem - primary iron making is a (comparatively) profitable operation - tune up the process control and produce a denser product.
What about the current offtake from the HVTF? Product will, presumably, be coming off the lines in a state that is relevant to understanding the best process setting for India (Coldry and/or Matmor, and maybe for LV). That's not the only density that can be produced but it is the density that will be used by the HVTF
which is a research facility, not a production facility. To retain our R&D offsets I'm sure the purpose of running the plant needs to be R&D and the selling of product to recoup costs needs to be incidental to the primary purpose.
So maybe the pellets are not at the optimum settings for local boiler use. Maybe they are - I can't tell from the photos and I doubt that any of you can either. If we can find a market for the incidental outputs of our test plant while we use it to tune the speeds and feeds for India great - if not, well it not the biggest fish we have to fry.
Note that ECTL keeps mentioning the profitabilty of the current process as the demand gap for a suitable boiler fuel in Australia expands - to me that is a little bit of signalling to the canny that they could (if not in a R&D phase) retune the process to produce better pellets and still make a profit.
Now consider the LV proposal - this will IMHO spend at least some of its time producing pellets at the higher end of the quality range. That will require research to tune the best process parameters also - to be done
as research at some time in the future at our HVTF? Or maybe at the LV facility itself?
I've never fully understood the motivations of the Troll Army - but don't imagine for one moment that they have a clear understanding of what is happening at ECTL - they simply have an excess of guile which they employ to seed doubt.
There are plenty of ways to understand this announcement (including simply reading it as an unvarnished account of what is happening with the boiler test program with no spin or deception) that give cause for confidence in an investment in ESI.
GLTAH.
(20min delay)