Ausheds, I appreciate your comments about LYC, but with this company your comments seem rather one-sided. Arafura has in recent years taken various approaches to optimizing the abundant deposit content, from potentially too much effort to pilot plants. What I regretted from the very beginning, as a mineralogist trained in application technology, was that modern methods of Mineral Liberation Analysis were not consistently used from the outset. Instead, with many trial and error steps, one has tried to approach the goal time and again with changing approaches, especially in the field of processing and digestion. In retrospect, this was undoubtedly the most tedious and, ultimately, the most expensive way.
Today, however, it is undisputed that this is one of the large, well-researched deposits outside China. The process now appears to be under economic control and a potent partner has been found in South Korea for the separation step. In the past, sales partners on the European market have also been looked after intensively. How current the stand with one of the leading metal trade organisations in Germany is, I have lost sight of something, although about ten years ago I had established the connection between the trade organisation of a German global corporation with the involvement of the Federal Ministry of Economics because of Arafura.
Today, I am looking forward to the results of the environmental impact study, the results of which should probably be made public in the near future. In this way, your repeated concerns about the slightly higher uranium and thorium content in the crude ore compared to MtWeld should also be dispelled, because this is the purpose of the process management to overcome such hurdles by means of chemical-physical processes.
If Lynas and Arafura see each other less as competitors than as spearheads of a modern, forward-looking chemical industry for Australia (even if production sites are not located in their home market) and could therefore work more closely together, this might open a way to higher value creation. Just such a thought, as in Germany, for example, the competing companies of the cement industry pursue fundamentally common goals through association structures.
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