Justin, March 8, the nickel price hit $100,000. Tell us what...

Justin, March 8, the nickel price hit $100,000. Tell us what itwas like, what went through your mind at that time, particularly knowing thatit was caused by a big short by one of your partners, Tsingshan – I thinkthat’s how you say it – I mean, you must have thought the world was coming toan end or starting or something…?

Yeah, it was an interesting time. We actually had just finishedthe Bank of Montreal Resources Conference and first time in two years wherewe’ve been able to get back in front of a number of our North American andEuropean investors. The story was received very well, we came off the back of asuccessful institutional placement, which was sort of four to five timesfilled. Share price was at sort of $1.79, which that’s a record high for us. Wegot to London and then the phones started to ring and of course, given thedifferent time zones we were up taking calls very early in the morning Londontime as it sort of became clear that there was a short squeeze happening andthe chairman of Tsingshan, who’s obviously our largest shareholder, was on theother side of that. So, yeah, it’s been an interesting couple of weeks, to saythe least.

How much does Tsingshan hold in your company?

They’re currently about 18.6 per cent, moving to around 21 per cent.The most recent transaction that we’re doing with them which is what’s calledOracle Nickel, which is for more RKEF lines that produce nickel pig iron, witha nameplate capacity at 36,000 tonnes of nickel. Our consideration for 70 percent is $US525 million. Tsingshan or Shanghai Decent elected to take $106million of that as Nickel Mine shares, which is in our view a very strongendorsement of the company and the alignment, rather than just taking cash offthe table. They’re our largest shareholder, they’ve been very supportive. Ifyou look back at the history and their execution, they’ve delivered everythingahead of schedule, the current operations of 30 to 35 per cent above nameplate,so they really are the leaders in terms of world NPI and stainless steelproduction. When you look at them on the global scale, they produced 12.8mt ofstainless last year, more than 20 per cent of the global market. So, they’re afantastic partner, we benefit from their size and their expertise.

Obviously, what else transpired with the short squeeze is it’sunfortunate, but absolutely no impact to our operations or our business. Infact, we’re on track to more than triple our nickel production in less than 12months and that’ll deliver $US800 million EBITDA on an annualised basisstarting from less than 12 months. The business is still very robust, butobviously it’s drawn a lot of attention on the chairman as he used to work hisway through the short position.

You answered a queryon the 9 March from **promotion blocked** talking about what had happened and yousaid then that Tsingshan had assured the company that they had no intention ofselling any shares, that there’s no change in their undertaking to purchase allof the nickel pig iron produced by your operations, no impact on the intentionto receive Nickel Mine shares and so on. But that was nearly three weeks ago,so no change, is there, since then on their position?

Absolutely no change on their position.