today i rang 08 9321 6600

today I thought i'd save people the trouble and call the company myself.

I spoke with Scott Funston, the finance dude.

Not a lot to report but here goes, in no apparent order -

1 no drill results yet, and cant advise when they will be forthcoming.

2 there is 1 lab in parapuebas and the other lab is in peru. But he advised all drillers in the region are experiencing delays. He could not advise when results would be forthcoming.

3 Tony P and Simon M are both in Brazil supervising activities.

4 AVB overall target is 50Mt at 1% across ALL holdings, which I must say did underwhelm me. But he did hasten to add that most companies with JORC 50MT have a market cap of about $300m, so there is 5-and-a-bit fold upside here.

5 timeframe for 50Mt is over the next 12 months (or more) to get it JORC'ed as well

6 Unlikely to ever see Vale drill results on TN published as they are Vale's drill results not AVB's. Go figure...

7 AVB is getting external verification on the JORC on TN and was unsure when it will be released, but assured me it would be released as soon as it became known.

8 The Drilling by Vale has been verified to a mining code, but not the JORC mining code, so it needs to be "translated" into a JORC relevent resource statement before publication.

9 Overall he was tight lipped and did not reveal anything voluntarily, but was pretty disappointed at how slow things were, and he also said that TP and SM are also annoyed at the slow state of drill results as well.

10 6 drill rigs are still banging away day after day, so a major arsenal of drill cores would be assembled ready to be assayed.

11 I did ask him what the "cafe bar" talk around the office was about what the size of the Antas South HGZ might be in terms of MT and grade, again he declined to comments. I suggested that TP and SM might have a guesstimate on it, but as Scott is merely a finance dude he said he had no idea about what it might be - "that is up to the geo's to come up with". Hah! there'd be chit-chat in the board room about what it might be already.

That's about it, but if other things come to me I will let you know..

HB