Hi PichmacI am happy to try and put the "for" case and if I get...

Hi Pichmac

I am happy to try and put the "for" case and if I get it wrong I don't mind at all if the readers point it out. That is the beauty of such a process. It forces the poster to do their homework and then put it up for marking.

Certainly the share price is under enormous pressure at the moment with two or three persistent sellers driving the price down and they did not even take a smoko as we past into the new financial year.

The thing I have found in my digging around is that the death of Solvay has, in my view, been greatly exaggerated. This process is alive and well and still producing more than three quarters of the world's soda ash. The nature Trona is limited to USA alone (ignoring miniscule production and reserves in Botswana and Kenya). At Searle's Valley there are environmental problems with birds dying and at the main production area of Green River in Kentucky the reserves are 460m underground.

My research show me that natural soda ash production is not increasing nor is Solvay production decreasing.

What this means is that we have a production process with a replacement value of $2b or more which is alive and well. Yes, it has a high maintenance cost but it is unlikely to close down even if Penrice were to fail. If Penrice went into receivership say, then customers like Amcor and Owens Illinois would be lined up to take their place.

This is worth arguing about because if I am right then Penrice is not an orphan but has protective big brothers and is a potential takeover target.

Here are the links on world soda ash production. One is a few years out of date but the best I could find. What it shows is that the natural Trona production is not increasing nor is the Solvay production decreasing.

World soda ash production

USA and World soda ash production

GPASAS