re: gold: kcn up 22 per cent good point lza - and of course, i...

re: gold: kcn up 22 per cent good point lza - and of course, i do not know the answer.

first things first - and as far as finding another chatree - which is quite likely. the funding issue is important, HOWEVER, just think about a few points. from memory, getting chatree up and running, cost US$35m. of course, costs have increased a bit since then, and the capacity of the plant has been upgraded. keep in mind though, that the level of cost increases, which have faced australian miners, is not as much a problem in thailand, as in australia.

secondly, to find, prove up, and develop another chatree, all takes time. for simplicity sake, if kcn's costs of production are us$250 per oz, and the company ends up getting us$600 per oz (after closing out the hedges), and the company produces 150000 oz per annum, then the gross profit is in the order of us$350 x 150,000 oz = us$52m - that should go a long way towards developing another mine. the more immediate thing is to be granted the mining leases for chatree north - and to double expansion

my own view, is that funding should not be a problem. keep in mind that the original funding for chatree, was virtually 100% debt funding, through maquarie bank (of course, gold needed to be hedged). even if gold needed to be hedged again, that would not be a real problem