News: MMI Metro Mining Achieved Production Guidance For 2018, page-2

This is a major change and rather than a transition seems to be a decision that has stunned many of us. Achieving 2 million tonnes is great news. The end of year has been difficult with an almost record start to the wet season so an update on barge performance in these conditions would be appreciated. Metro Mining have taken a bold step in changing to owner miner but this is a positive for profitability in the medium to long term but must be analysed with the high MMI staff & management turnover at the mine. Has this decision been made to reduce costs over the wet season? Did the MMI - SAB relationship turn sour and how how does this affect other key contractor relationships? Have costs for the quarter blown out and is this a knee jerk reactionary measure to attack costs or soften the market to bad news on profitability??? MMI have told us very little and this release comes off a period of virtually no news from MMI, so what is going on??

SAB have also provided considerable dollars to capital raisings and have approached the project as a partner to MMI. "SAB has performed admirably" in the words of Simon Finnis and the ASX release gives us no details of what has occurred and this is typical Metro Mining. SAB delivered with 2 million tonnes and from the sidelines what appeared to be a coherent solid team who took some leadership at the site when issues arose. All we can hope for is that the SAB team will be retained through the transition period and MMI focuss not only on achieving this but also the 3.5 million tonne expansion.  More questions than answers now as we enter a period of negative cash flow.