Hi BazzleDog (and others). I agree, it's not complicated, but...

Hi BazzleDog (and others). I agree, it's not complicated, but that doesn't mean they aren't giving it priority.
Having just finalised some development funding of my own (not in mining though), I have been tearing my hair out for almost 6 months with a few different lenders, bashing my already-not-so-pretty head up against hard walls and immovable objects. Lenders are taking their sweet time at the moment in Australia (both first and second tier), and I can only imagine that international is even worse (given their additional exposure to multiple jurisdictions). They usually come good in the end, but the problem is the process can be very convoluted, especially when "head office" continually updates policies while in the middle of a deal, requiring additional work on an area that you thought was already covered off. I'm not saying that is what is happening with us here, merely that if funding is difficult for most (larger) business funding deals in this environment, then our mine development funding is going to be no different. Having an "in principle" government guarantee basically assures us of a certain amount of funding, but it doesn't remove the invariably onerous requirements we still need to satisfy (market research, quality of buyer agreements, clauses in the off-takes, firm costs for construction, stress-tested future cashflows, stress tested resource quality, etc etc). On the plus side, unlike a couple of other graphite companies, we aren't being sent back to do a proper BFS and get a proper bankable JORC with "Measured and Indicated" because we always knew we'd have to do them, and hence we just got ahead with the job. I know from my chat last week with management that finance is still progressing on track.

Patience, grasshopper, patience.