The Company makes the followings observations:
1. Utah Point was built to exclusively support the juniors; and
2. It has long been bipartisan policy of Western Australian State Governments that access to
Utah Point is reserved exclusively for the juniors.
Ok I understand the initial plan was fof emerging juniors (as per below) but given the inevitable consolidation in the industry, that policy would need to be reviewed. It's unlikely that much capacity would be utilised by juniors thru there. Atlas and Brockman are the only ones with an interest at present in NWI. http://www.nwioa.com.au/
I've gone through the Port Headland Authority Port Development Plan and there is no mention throughout the doc that NWI is just reserved for the juniors (page 15).
The below ann from AGO in 2012 simply mentions that NWI up to 50mt capacity has B-Class port capacity.
In the diagram further below, Hancock's berth is next to NWI and that has 20mt of B class capacity and 35 A class capacity. The capacity type is shared between the two so long Hancock's plans to increase B class capacity only if it takes over AGO.
The below link is the vessel movements protocol at Port Headland. The different class types are explained also.
I don't think there should be any issues with either the big players utilising the excess capacity which has been there for 6 years and providing a revenue stream for the port
AGO Price at posting:
4.2¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
