quarterly, page-12

I, like the rest of you, am waiting patiently for good news re the IHP demonstration plant. But given all these extra delays I've had time to read all that I can about the IHP process and the benefits,costs etc. Hence my comments below...

I note that page 5 of the new quarterly regurgitates the same paragraph as previous reports that I have copied below:

"The logic for this singular process investigation is that whilst the scoping study demonstrated that a conventional Wet Acid Process project was technically feasible and produced reasonable financial metrics, the quantum of the capital expected to be required to implement such a project, being over US$2 billion, is likely to be beyond the reach of the Company, particularly in the current economic climate."

During my research I went back to the 2011 Wonarah enabling study:

http://www.minemakers.com.au/documents/111128WonarahEnablingStudyConfirmsEconomicPotentialforMajorFertiliserProductionFacility.pdf

and on page 3 there is a table that compares the project economics between WAP and IHP. Now the reason quoted above for choosing IHP is because WAP requires over 2 billion in capitol which is beyond the reach of this company. However, the capitol costs for IHP are listed in the enabling study at 1.691 billion - not exactly cheap (vs 2.464 billion for WAP).

If 2.5 billion is too much for a tried and tested processing method, how does 1.7 billion in capitol costs seem reasonable for a minnow like MM? At the end of the day its the economics that determine if projects get off the ground - no matter how good the technology is. My concern is they keep telling us the old technology is too expensive but one has to go back to 2011 to get an idea of the costs for IHP. Even if IHP works the project costs may be way out of our ball park???

I am scientist, not a businessman, so I'm not really sure how project funding works, but I would be interested to hear others thoughts on this matter...