Offtake/Finance wrap up, page-4

Apologies for any confusion Birchcorp.

I have tried to understand the narrative around the ECE exit - whom and why requested even demanded such - which of course heavily weighed on completion of offtake and finance.

Whom - Certainly not Hyundai (SK). I would hazard a guess and say both Germany and GE.

Why - the obvious one is ex China supply requires no Chinese interest in a given company. It escapes me who but I did see another company which had to divest Chinese interests similarly.
The other why - as clearly as ARU made it in stating our then ECE director had been on leave for 2 months prior to ECE ann of their divestment and during that significant event the ECE director was released. Clearly the sensitive negotiations and the weaponization of critical minerals supply was at play - management and our parties deep into negotiations did not want China observing - as they do everywhere - with their careful strategies and placements of persons. We have all read about it on various occasions with the obvious one being the Huawei exec being detained on tech intel gathering in US being the big headline one.

Anyway - we have complied with such - at great short term pain to sp (the time they took from literally 0% to 2.9%) - which matters little long term.
That significant event - compliance paved the way forward for what must be very close to completion of remaining negotiations. This is critical - the shorts are a passing event - the Chinese PrNd current low pricing is also a passing event as demand spikes - it will adjust - or worse case scenario we suck it up for the first period of binding agreements to expire - then we are free with a very large portion (GE appears set for a longer term offtake) of unhinged production to really cash in at a period that sees demand is really outstripping supply. And other potentials remain just that - potentials stranded - which in turn could advantage ARU with future increased refining capacity from concentrate by other Australian producers - all onshore here in OZ. And IF - IF the Darwin processing hub tie up comes to fruition then more PrNd and additional heavies - unhinged into spot market some 5 years down the track?