waiting... waiting, page-57

I recon it could be sorted in the next few weeks.

Now I am certainly no expert on mining JVs (no expert on anything really). I am sure they are complex.
I just think of time frames. And it seems six months is quite doable.

Last August we had a deal. It fell through. We were not given too many details on that one. It took them almost six months to get something else together (may have been same people or same deal). Then last December we thought we had a deal. Deal was then changed / or pulled by anglo (or their part of it who knows, something changed, and PL was pretty angry about it).

So focussing on a time frame, as soon as NKP management was not able to do the December halt deal they were surely going back to previously interested parties and saying hey look those clowns changed their mind, we are now open for a deal. I would say this was early January.

Then early Feb we gat a license to mine.

So we have had 5-6 months, to nut something out since last disappointment and a mining license is now there. In that time we must have had a pretty good idea of the BFS DFS numbers and could have gone a long way to deal. Under a couple of scenarios (eg with or without anglo deal).
There has been some tweaking of the BFS stuff in that time. But certainly since early or at least mid May (and I would think way before in reality) every detail was on the table.

They have had enough time for sure.
I really thought that they would well and truly have chosen who by now, and what deal. And left the other two in as backups, just stringing them along. But that was just my guess. PL's email did not suggest that at all, but it would still make sense to me if that was the case.

As for delay, I can only think of is with anglo deal or not (they would delay no matter what), or an official mining license required. Or something unforseen like, we have a deal, but hey look that mine closed and we could use their plant, so lets get a better deal.