Member Info for Alfacomp

reteps I got an answer from Craig earlier today saying that they were aware of a problem that prevented certain posts from showing and that ' Developers have it on their fix list.' So the implication is that the post are still stored just not showing. I do hope that they have not accidentally been deleted.

with all the reversed trades - every other day since the 1st of June there has been a trade and its direct inverse - is someone messing about ? If so then I may start to track all this behaviour.

Sanchez, alas those that have met me can attest that that first suggestion is not going to be happening.

Bid has ticked up this morning and now there are 4 market makers buying and only 1 (Cantor) selling - we have seen this situation quite a lot recently.

faramog - you quoted the rebar production costs but I gave the cost of Vanadium as a fraction of the selling price. Hence why our two percentages a different. Either way I think that you could increase the the cost of the Vanadium by 100% and the buyers of the steel would still have deep enough pockets to absorb the relatively small prices increases in the end product. The steelmakers might not like it but they will get used to it quickly enough as long as the can find buyers for their product. And let's face it which government is going to say, yeah no problem you can make those buildings out of cheaper weaker steel ? The use of Vanadium is only going one way - up.

OMG that is totes amazing Sanchez

faramog 0.1% Vanadium is only for the very highest grade of rebar - grade 5

Thus rebar grade 3 - 1 tonne uses 0.3 Kg, or 22 USD worth 1 tonne of rebar in china currently costs around 525 USD ( http://steelbenchmarker.com/files/history.pdf ) though I expect this to rise somewhat as rebar 2 is outlawed. Thus the percentage cost due to Vanadium is about 3.5% . Double the amount of Vanadium and you can instead sell rebar grade 4 which is 20% stronger.

numpty5 - it depends upon precisely what grade of steel you want:- The new rebar standard, GB/T 1499.2-2018 released by the government on 6 February 2018, eliminates low strength Grade 2 (335MPa) rebar and authorizes 3 different high strength standards: Grade 3 (400MPa), Grade 4 (500MPa), and Grade 5 (600MPa). Professor Yang Caifu, of the Chinese Central Iron & Steel Research Institute (CIRSI) who leads the joint Vanitec/CISRI Vanadium Technology Centre noted that “for hot-rolled HS rebar, V content will be at 0.03% V in Grade 3, 0.06% V in Grade 4, and more than 0.1% in Grade 5 rebar so the implementation of the new standard will significantly promote the application of vanadium in Chinese rebar products.” The implementation date for the new standard is 1 November, 2018. http://vanitec.org/latest-from-vanitec/article/vanitec-applauds-new-stricter-chinese-rebar-standard

At the end of last week they were quoting European FeV at 69-71.2 USD/Kg (V) https://www.metalbulletin.com/Article/3812347/Vanadium/European-FeV-price-surge-on-renewed-supply-concerns-spot-demand-flurry.html however as the article makes clear "Prices have continued to climb with each passing day" - this is a period of rapid increase, possibly as a result of this years environmental shutdowns in China and in the run up to the rebar regulations there which start in November

Loudspeaker - any idea when we might get the next Metal Bulletin update on price quotes.

ludeck - you are thinking about the BEE requirement as some sort of one off tax - some of which needs to be borne by Sojitz. It is not that - the BEE owner is not the South African government it is a partner that we have specifically brought in to meet the requirements of the legislation. The question therefore of how much money from Vametco 'leaks out' into the BEE is therefore not one which is has an obvious answer, especially if the BEE partner has no funds of its own and therefore needs to borrow from BMN in the first place. Further down the line there is another question of how much profit BMN wishes Vametco to make from its mining and how much profit Bushveld Minerals/Energy wishes to make from the manufacturing of electrolyte. This of course is a movable feast, but a feast it is nonetheless.

Nick - your trades still not showing yet. Sometimes you must wonder if you did actually remember to hit the Buy button.

a 100K value buy pop up this morning ?

SOTRR - I am not going to say anything more on the subject of Jaxson as it is clear that the idea that they simply got brought in as cookie cutter BEE partners, took no risk, and yet get to walk away with 25% profit as some sort of political kickback has been challenged and is clearly untrue. You are correct that government policy affects the way that capitalism works. I have some familiarity with this myself when in a somewhat different area when I was dealing with taking the UK government to task over its failed initial attempts to introduce a UK version of the US Small Business Research Initiative back in the early noughties. Many people in the UK are unaware that, in the bastion of Capitalism, the US, all government contracts are mandated by law to spend a certain fraction (23%) of their value with companies that are below a certain size (<500 employees or <5M USD revenue) - this is the so-called small business set aside policy. Do we complain about the obvious inherent size-ism of such a policy - no because the government justifies it by asserting that forcing trickle down of value in this way has an economic and social benefit. If it is okay for the US to justify policies like this as being entirely compatible with capitalism then I see no reason why similar SA policies are castigated as being only marginally better than Zimbabwe's ex-dictator Mugabe.

Tyfoon BMN loaned Jaxson 1.25M USD Jaxson had to assume the debt of the existing BEE partner $3.04M to get the shares in Vametco from the existing BEE partner. So they had to find at least another 1.8M USD in cash or they are on the hook to another lender for it. The idea that somehow Jaxson got a free ride and has been able to profit from BMN/Vametco without having to take any risk itself is clearly not true and needs to be challenged.

Tyfoon - $1.25M does not pay for $3M debt - QED

So having established that Jaxson DID have to put its own money on the table can someone please tell me why they are not to be afforded the same respect that white investors expect when they make a wise investment decision.

SOTRR you assert that Jaxson did not put any funds in to buy 25% of Vametco, when we and YD had to put in something like 17M USD for 59%. Can you let me know how a 655K loan from BMN is sufficient to buy that 25% ?

YTSS - 1) cash 2) equity in BMN which with Mokopane and through Bushveld Energy is going to be making more profit than Vametco in a couple of years time.