miyabi gold project, page-12

It is to our advantage to keep the key assets and not to consider early divestment.

We already have different people taking care of the different parts of the business.

You do not suppose that in corporations like BHP the same guys run several business units.

The other problem is the overhead costs of running a listed company - these would be compounded if the different business units were launched as separate listed companies.
The main reason why we should keep the silica and gold and some of the other minerals is that without any offtake agreements or silicon smelter the assets would most likely be significantly undervalued.

I have posted in the past some references to the future of hyperpure silica � we all understand semiconductor industry needs and growth over the past three decades, we need to have the understanding and vision of the future of solar, LED lighting and fibre optics technologies (how much fibre for the $40B NBN project) to see why we will be laughing all the way to the bank � it is just a matter of 2 � 5 years. We can supply a number of offtake arrangements and multiple smelters for several decades.

Although the profit numbers for the silica are difficult to estimate and the management does not give any indication even of possible price range under consideration, it is my opinion that a profit on 100K ton p.a. silica offtake would be at least equal to one aluminium salt slag facility � and as mentioned, we can supply multiple of such offtake arrangements for a long time.

As far as the gold mining is concerned it is a capital intensive business � the processing facility needs to be built and it is more cost effective to combine with other miners in the vicinity who already have an underutilised processing facility. On the positive, it is often the case that a bit of drilling and a fresh look at the mineral deposit structure, it may be possible to find a lot more of the stuff than originally thought possible. That is the essence of exploration upside potential. We would be silly to divest without an honest attempt at finding larger deposit.

Tin has also gone up in price significantly.