So I finally got to see the Plant today. I even got to touch it...

So I finally got to see the Plant today. I even got to touch it (sigh). Thank you humms for the lift and tunay for the company!

We walked around and under it but unfortunately didn't get to climb into and up the guts of it - but I understand that was probably too high an expectation.

There was a definite feeling of excitement, with one director (RH) saying (when asked how long until APG has "made it") saying that "In my opinion, APG HAS made it".
Press was there (NBN news - nice looking reporter!), and apparently someone from Rio Tinto (who knows why). Was there an investment analyst there too from Melbourne?
A smattering of shareholders but a significant number of those listed as expected at the gate couldn't make it in the end.

I spent the time on tour attached to John Winter's right shoulder so as to glean as much as I could from his more open manner (Mike was very friendly too but really just continued to give the stock standard and expected responses to all the questions I had or overheard, with one exception which I shall come to later).
John is like a little boy in a custom-built playground! He just oozes excitement and seems to be having a great time tweaking this and fixing that, etc etc. If he doesn't know every bolt and piece of pipe (and there are a LOT of pipes!) in the construction, then I will be very surprised.
I expect that he tucks it in at night and sings it to sleep!
The timing of today's Open Day became apparent when we learnt of a power failure due to a storm on the weekend (yet another invaluable and unplanned "problem" to learn from). This stopped things for a while, enough to delay the planned initial production of the first "official" synrutile until tonight or tomorrow (instead of dropping dramatically into the hopper strategically placed so that we all would have seen it and been part of the moment). Never mind, it will happen by tomorrow!
John explained that the Plant "has paid for itself 20x over" if only because of the countless lessons learnt and experienced gained in really doing this in a real Plant and not on the lab bench. He was not at all phased by scaling up from 3ktpa to 60ktpa (in fact it should work better because the bigger pipes and structures would be less fiddly). It will go right up to well over 200ktpa before needing parallel equipment. Summary - it works and scale up is easy.
It was lovely to see the tiny wisps of pure white "smoke" coming out of the single thin chimney - I asked john and he confirmed that it was 100% H2O. It vanished within a second of coming out of the stack - a green dream! In fact while we were there we saw a team of people from an independent emissions evaluation firm (forgot their name) who were there to independently verify that this was the case - to document the veracity of APG's claim. A nice touch.
John is full of ideas and enthusiasm to improve the place even more - using biofuels, working on other processes (eg Zinc), etc. Like I said, he seems to be having a ball! He is so humble and unassuming that it is hard to believe that the genius he has in that brain is really there. The English language lacks a word that equates to the Italian "simpatico", but John would be it. He just looked like all the other guys there, you would never guess he was anything more important.

I asked MT about where we were in negotiations re commercialisation - straight bat - "We will sell every tonne we make". End of discussion.
Does the MultiServe agreement end soon? "Yes"
Then what? "We'll just extend it. They haven't yet had the chance to see what they need to see"
So, another 9mths (tongue in cheek)? "No" (glaring at me!)
"it's all working now, so it won't take long"
So, 5 minutes? " " (no answer!)
What about Gold? "Don't hold your breath" "Mike is still spending some time on it" (not sure what to make of that response).

Still the leaching to do, but otherwise I expect we shall soon hear of the successful production of synrutile in the world's first continuous operation ilmenite processing Plant (ours!)

Good things are coming but I don't know how long we still have to wait.

Please correct me guys (who were there)if I have reported anything inaccurately. Hope this helps those who were not...

Cheers,
sasa