Thanks very much for the comprehensive response @That...

Thanks very much for the comprehensive response @That Fundamental Guy. I'm very time poor at the moment. Moving to live in Dubai in a weeks time so I will be researching further but unlikely to be too active regarding posting here.

You confirmed my thoughts on the sluggishness being involved with the JV partner. It's evident in the progress over the latter months that this was slowing down the project.

Very much liking the straight up approach they have. MD is very to the point.

The off takes that were in place by the likes of Mitsui are derisking in itself when it comes to finance. As you say it does seem very likely this will be incorporated in to financing the project.

Any ideas or information about on how much Capex would increase for 10-20mtpa? I suspect the Capex of 1.4b to be increased a fair bit without the expansion as the PFS was some time ago and inflation is on the rise.

I like to invest in Tier 1 resources. Especially those that operate in the lowest cost quartile in terms of Opex.

Hawson's has very favourable ore body characteristics with its soft ore.

Energy is the main contributor to cost when it comes to mining. Hawson's has a 75% reduction in energy costs over competitors and has access to renewable energy sources.

Hawson's is profitable in every iron ore price environment and let's face it, people aren't going to stop using steel. A good fundamental driver over the likes of manganese, also used for steel, is market share.

Manganese output in australia is only 15% of global production and with the two main countries China and South Africa able to undercut manganese producers in Australia through predominantly cheap labour. Not the case with Iron ore as Australia produces double the amount of Chinaand has better control and influence of the overral market.




Therefore, I see less risk in Iron ore over manganese.

Another key positive is the support from govt. South Australia has overtaken WA in terms of mining jurisdiction. I'm in another WA developee who is really struggling to get approvals with regards to border closures and man power, staff are hard to come by and consultants even more so.


Other than the Capex hurdle the only other risk that comes to mind is a delay to the BFS which is common around ASX juniors. I'd imagine there could be share price suppression much of the year leading up to BFS.

From what I've seen I like management. A big confidence and trust boost when the MD tackled the heavy rain issue and ordered another drilling team to keep the project on track.

Fundamentals look great. The 200m loan facility enables us to work on building towards construction and could bring in new investors who would be previously put off by the inevitable cap raise later down the road.

NPV works on cashflow over the years which gets discounted heavily towards the end, especially with a long mine life of 40 years.

To increase production to 20mtpa would seriously blow this NPV out of the water bringing mouth-watering returns and IRR.

Cheers, FreeflyerNZ