Base Resources from all appearances are doing okay shipping...

Base Resources from all appearances are doing okay shipping their first loads of mineral sands recently and looking to be cash-flow positive soon.

As long as the Asian economies (i.e. China and Japan) stay reasonably strong (they love tiles and hate carpet) and the Euro economies start to pick up (the Spanish and Portuguese love tiles and hate carpet also) ever so slowly surely we can turn a buck and attract a JV partner. I fear it may be the high capital costs and wages that make us a less profitable operation than Base - probably get to pay the Kenyans much lower wages that Aussie miners earn.

Maybe POSCO will look at a complete takeover and de-listing rather than a JV = get the deposit and import a whole lot of cheap labour like they have with other Aussie mines. When you don't have to worry about shareholders, listing fees, EPS etc = plenty of scope to ramp up the margins.