A couple of interest points raised, that I'd like to add my two...

A couple of interest points raised, that I'd like to add my two cents too.

Merelani - the initial attraction was the ease/speed at which we could have potentially been in production, if the ducks had lined up. Unfortunately, they didn't line up, and we are still here after numerous delays (predominantly not through the fault of KNL, I might add). However, the deal itself I don't believe to be at risk. Management have reaffirmed the intention of STAMICO to do a deal with KNL as their preferred partner, and this has been also confirmed with the new buyers of TanzaniteOne from Richland Resources (which, incidentally, caused it's own delays as they underwent their sale process and a new buyer came on board). As Simpa points out, KNL independently owns and has consolidated numerous tenements surrounding the existing Merelani tanzanite mine. No-one else can do a deal for any other Merelani graphite without the consent of KNL. The attraction for KNL in pursuing a deal with STAMICO, while no longer one of time (i.e. to get into production asap), is still hugely beneficial because of existing approvals in place. Even though the graphite mine isn't operating, any deal with STAMICO comes with environmental and mining licence approvals either all or almost all completed. And that is the big attraction to us, because it means that mining can commence at Merelani as soon as the buyers commit and funding is in place, and is no longer contingent on application process. If, as some people had suggested last year, KNL just "went it alone" on their existing Merelani tenements, we'd still be bogged down in the environmental and mining licence approval process. So these delays with the Merelani JV, while unfortunate, don't actually put KNL behind the 8-ball at all when compared to if KNL had started a greenfields approval process last year on it's own Merelani assets.

Epanko - someone raised the prospect of TK falling over. While it's possible, it's also highly unlikely. Chinese buyer shenanigans aside, graphite isn't something that buyers ordinarily enter into LOI's on a whim. By the time LOIs have been signed, genuine buyers have already done a lot of background work, and sought preliminary graphite specifications. By the time they are well into their LOI/MOU periods, the buyers have undertaken (at their own cost) extensive testing, and have worked out how they need to tweak/amend their existing process diagrams for using that unique graphite in their business. It would generally take something from extreme left field for the buyer to suddenly turn around now and say "thanks, but no thanks". Especially as the buyers generally aren't pursuing other suppliers at the same time (i.e. TK didn't announce two LOI's for 20 ktpa with two different producers, to try and play them off against each other). For background, the existing EGT was quicker in the conversion from MOU to binding off-take (less than 6 months), HOWEVER, the EGT had been dealing with KNL for well over a year beforehand, and had already undertaken some testing before they signed the MOU. When you add in the total amount of time that the EGT took with KNL, then TK is suddenly looking pretty good in terms of their timeframes. Finally, I'll add that TK are a massive, huge, enormous business. They, like any large organisation, have their own unwieldy bureaucratic processes. Just think about how long BHP has at various points "ummed and ahhed" over Olympic Dam, or numerous other examples. TK's importance to KNL is not the same as KNL's importance to TK. That's not a negative, it just is what it is. China, India, US, Indonesia even, are all much more important to Australia than Australia is to them.

PS - forgot to mention in my previous post about the shorts, thanks to Tangible for alerting me to them in the first place. I hadn't even realised they'd happened initially. Not much any of us can do about them, but it's good to be alert for, because if you don't need to sell, then you are better off not falling for the traps that others occasionally set up.