First of all I think I'll take a good cold shower, as interesting as this all is I'm jaded enough not to get too hooked into the story too early with Austpac, but that said the Austpac technology is still best of breed in published efficiency figures. The information was surprisingly easily found on a google search and lead quickly to iron sands and steel in New Zealand (not much else to Australasia after all).
Looking at the history of the iron sands process there is a lot of grief in there around inefficient conversion and too much waste. If all Austpac with its extra efficiency is doing is working over what they didn't convert previously there are a few decades of material to be re-done. This does make sense. IF it is NZ steel then BHP has had over a decade since that history ended so I'd be the proverbial blind man trying to describe an elephant by touch if I tried to guess any deeper than that.
The Austpac company secretary was his usual polite but tight lipped (as he has to be) self so all I could get was the usual "funding is in hand to keep the company viable until a contract can be finalised". From other sources I understand there have been moves to firm up the funding using some sort of financing option but this is reliant on them bringing one of the current negotiations to fruition. There is a big hint in the illmenite/synrutile buy/sell arrangement they touted they were negotiating in the quarterly report as to one of their options. Actually I think they said straight out it was the mechanism to fund the synrutile plant so there must be some sort of finance around that as it's otherwise a bit hard to sell the synrutile before you make it. I'd imagine if it drags on (as it has for so long) there will probably be another small placement, hopefully at a much higher price than fridays close. I think the syn rutile plant is the key there though I have been told that the Australasian company is covering all Austpacs costs (hopefully including labour) for the work being done on that waste recovery plant, maybe that will push another placement further out.
This is still a speccy and everyone should be doing thier own research, Austpacs business unfolds at a glacial pace and engenders some frustration (sic).
That said I don't know if you could knock over Austpac with a nuke, these blokes appear a bloody determined bunch and don't give in.
Cheers
Seik
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