some q and a from the ceo

How much more work is required to make it viable?

It is already viable - we have made 6 shipments.

All of the JORC's that I have seen usually have grades above 60%.?

No they don't unless you are looking at pure magnetite as it naturally is rare to occur like this - maybe you are looking at the benefication value?

Basically is this resource any good?
It's valued today at US$350million

In my view the Fe grades in Fortescue (FMG) and Merchinson Metals (MMX) seem to be much superior. Therefore, who is going to buy such low grades when the majority of the companies in the Pilbra are having higher grades?

This statement is nonsense. Clearly we beneficiate it up to 63.5% but the key advantage we have over these competitors is our iron ore has very low Al2O3 and Australian iron has nearly three times the value.

Magnetite mining at Cia Minera Santa Barbara is very different to mining hematite. The grades that we are getting from drilling are below the actual head grade which we process which is 22-25% Fe. The Fe Mag is about 59-60% so this means it is very cheap to mine as we basically crush it and magnetically separate it and we get almost 60% fe on three passes.

If we turnup the magnetic force and increase the number of passes we can produce 67% Fe but it is more expensive.

We have no overburden to remove nor do we need gravity separation media, or crushing to below 3mm which is required in Fortescue and Murchinson.

So there costs are much higher than ours. Of the three major magnetitie mines around the world we are the lowest in terms of mining cost