Member Info for Catbert

WesStocks, I would guess a far lower ASIC for Bibemi near to $1100 and possibly lower.

The gold is a reasonable average grade and near to surface. Shallow open pit - a spoke and hub mining operation is what has been mooted as the way to progress the site. So lowish on Cap Ex too. The latest drilling and models should add a small amount to the resource and move most of what has been identified to a higher level of certainty in the model.

A mining convention is currently being discussed with the Ministry. Added to which the trend is a large one so the property has some degree of expansion potential.

My guess is that we sell it once we have the mining convention in place. This guess is based on the fact that our BOD elected to give themselves a shed load of our business in free shares earleir this year. Nice work if you can get away with it.

Now they are buying more. My guess is that either they know that Bibemi is close to an inflection point or some of the cores at Mbe have hit something exceptional and they need to buy before the lab results come back.

IMHO and all guesswork but assuming the 200plus G/T grab sample at Mbe wasn't put there by a passing spaceship it is a realistic possibility.

When a Geo puts her own money into a share that tells you something about what she might be thinking.

GLA. It's been emotional and some of you lot have sloped off to that lot in Columbia but I think the little golden bird is in play again. Time will tell.

Interesting report MM. I'm glad I'm not a BHP shareholder.

It seems their metallurgical coal assets are shaping their entire strategy.

The world has changed.

MM your theory could stack up. Perhaps there isn't enough at Simandou for all the blending that Rio need and so Zanaga is also a resource they'd like to get their hands on. According to my AI at least.

The idea that a second bidder has entered the fray is also a possibility although the delay in the "event" could be due to other things such as delays in the reporting/ studies for Hydro near site. Another crucial piece which would also front run the early production project.

Out of the Aussies, if it isn't Rio then my bet would be BHP who seem to have gone down the beneficiation route to stop their Pilbara rust problem. Execs there must be asking what ifs?

Short term BHP can get away with this approach perhaps justifying it on the basis that the real switch to green iron will be more in the order of a decade or even two. Even though demand for the highest grades are due to begin to become far more important in the near term.

These players are in an existential crisis even if BHP doesn't think so. Indeed one motive to buy Zanaga might be to stop someone else from doing so. It is a market with a small number of players and if any one of them make a series of bad moves it will destroy their margins and eventually they'll be consumed by the stronger players.

So the motives for buying Zanaga are threefold;

1. Blending.

2. Future Green Steel market product.

3. To stop a competitor from getting it.

All of the players must have a game plan for what happens to the remaining, available high grade Tier1 Iron ore deposits.

In truth they are all playing a poker game in which hands are played over years and even decades.

Hi extrader. I'm not sure what it means.

Zanaga stage 1 isn't scheduled to be producing until 2030 assuming FEED is begun by mid year.

However there is one other "workflow" item to add to the list which is the Early Production Program.

The Early Production Project might not stack up and could get killed off.

However if it trots and this is primarily a power at site and logistics question then it could change the project's economics with resultant early cash flows and economic benefits for CB.

We are still waiting on more details about the local Hydro. Once we have this then we could get a fuller picture on the viability of the EPP.

There are still a bunch of other very big questions which remain to be answered the SI being the stand out.

My guess is that anything positive on the EPP will have a significant impact.

It could also result in a fair bit of road building and some new job opportunities for those local to Zanaga, all in time for an election year.

GLA DYOR

Tafigura is a tading company like Glencore. Often these types of business will extend credit lines to nations they trade with to secure the buiness of said entity. Glens credit line was related to petro chemical trading so Trafigura would seem to have supplanted them in this area.

Glen has been on an extended project of balance sheet repair for several years and certainly any liability where there is slow payment or no payment must be incurring a bad debt provision possibly even a potential write off. Bad debt recovery is all a bottom line item as it all hits the P&L and free cash on payment.

If Glen has been in merger talks the loss of Oil trading with CB and a cash recovery of an aged debt would be advantageous. It is also advantageous for CB to be seen to repay a debt particularly an aged one.

It also means that Glen might be in funds to offer some sort of loan facility to the eventual SI at Zanaga where they also have a trading relationship. It might be a better covenant depending on the SI to the one they had with the government of CB. This last point is a little tenuous but nonetheless a possibility.

Ether way it is good to see the government of CB acting in good faith and honouring it's financial obligations even though they are a little bot stretched in that regard. They have the right intentions it would seem and that is a good thing.

All guesswork but it looks like they were pretty close on something and just ran out of time.

Either that or they've had a new entrant who needs more time.

It could also be that the event was in part designed to provoke any waverers into putting their hats into the ring. If any did that might necessitate putting more time on the clocks for all players.

Given all this time another month or so is neither here nor there in the grand scheme.

All IMHO or should I say humble imagination (IMHI).

Fingers crossed everyone.

Sqeaky bum time is upon us.

GLA.

Once you bring "string" into the discussion that's when the dad jokes start.

Please be very careful.

The simple reality is that we don't know what is happening. We can guess of course.

The facts leading up to this point include the port announcement, the CB legislature being told to make things happen and not to allow selfish private interests to hold up nationally important infrastructure and development projects.Then the power announcement.

The announced shareholders event may have flushed out some new hands and one suspects that many SI players would ideally play their hands in their own chosen timeline but possibly the event may have caused some to change their plan.

We also know that a couple of the prospective SI's were secret -Marty couldnt reveal where he'd been.

We also know that there was a right farrago last year following the newspaper article which spiked the price and the BOD had to come in deny leaking anything and pop the price action to prove as much.

So someone or some people don't want their identities revealed until the last minute.

The product we have is top grade seabourne and of geo strategic importance. Green steel is the future and the Pilbara rust problem is a systemic and existential matter for at least three big players. Our pipeline offering has a relatively low cost of development and our resource is hugely understated and offers what Pierre Lassonde would say in his lovely French Canadian accent "Optionality" and lots of it.

My guess is that as they have announced London and the date they can announce the venue very late in the day should they so wish. Possibly even on Monday.

Op sec. Secret squirrel. Mum's the word etc.

To quote the Monkees "I'm a believer".

The drills at Mbe look disappointing in terms of grades however we know at the same time that there are Bonanza grade samples at the site from previous work.

The question which we need more than one drill to answer is where are these higher grade sections? The ideal would be for the bulk lower grade areas and the high grade aspects to give us a net 2 oz/ ton.

The resource clearly extends at depth.

I think we're way to early to call Mbe. It could still be in the 2-4Moz range at a decenet average grade and had we hit some of the higher graded areas this would be in full lift off mode.

Bibemi already has that level of grade and it looks like the extent of the deposit will be expanded along with its levels of certainty. So Bibemi looks to have the credentials of a gold mine in economic terms and we await the negotiation of a mining convention to see if this can be advanced.

The price here has drifted lower over the recent weeks. Today's drop was a little meodramatic. It could easily be a slow steady build now from here.

GLA DYOR

I agree MM I don't think a deal has been done yet. Indeed the point of the meeting on Feb 11th if it happens is to outline a process. That doesn't preclude preliminary talks and even soundings on what might or might not be an acceptable offer were one to be made.

Attending the event is good PR and in any case the the project itself isn't exclusively for the benefit of the shareholders it is a national project which should create economic development, transport infrastructure, good jobs, the economic multiplier effect, supply chain development, rural power supply, training and political cache in an election year.

Good post extrader.

It looks like Fortescue have now baulked at the idea of installing the country's railway system as the $10bn price for developing Belinga and they are now trying to make sense of the numbers and whether or not they add up with all that is now expected of them.

It could well be that the $200m they have committed may need to be written off or that perhaps the Gabonese Government will need to row back on their demands or that Fortescue will need a partner to help them navigate what is becoming a more complex and uncertain situation.

Either way Fortescue are now going to have to slow play their hand in Gabon which must put them in the frame for Zanaga.

Pipeline anyone?

"More detailed information on the Investor Event will be announced shortly".

2nd January 2025.

ZOIC is beginning to look a little flakey given that they announced the event at the beginning of January and haven't confirmed a time, agenda or venue yet.

I am beginning to wonder if perhaps something has changed?

I am planning to attend. Hopefully they will release the details soon.

Excellent post Jiving. It's certainly a logical thesis and well reasoned. I hope you're right!

Maj you are correct $1.8 bn is a lot of money.

This isn't a corner shop they're opening though.

The payback time is 1.6 years. The mine life is a minimum of 30 years.

They have ROM material too and the product by the time it is in production will have a much higher value than it does presently as by 2030 there will be a 70mtpa shortage of this grade of material. It is a geo strategically important asset and the major Iron ore producers have a problem with grades. They have an existential crisis.

I agree that we shouldn't over play our hand in terms of what we have, but neither should we underplay it.

There were two failed bids to do this deal back in 2014. Both rejected by Rio. There are a number of possible reasons for this not least of which was the hand played by Chinalco who are Rio's largest shareholder with the geo strategic issue of the merged group having control over a large percentage of the sea-bourne ore markets however the other factors incuded issues such as cultural fits between the two management styles and questions about the detail of how the businesses would be merged. Perhaps of greater concern at the time was the levels of commodity prices, Iron ore in particular, so the timing wasnt great from Rio's perspective. There were a host of other issues too with Rio taking a generally more conservative view about some of the more spicey jurisdictions that Glencore operated in and also governance and regulatory issues that would inevitably come with creating a miner with such a dominant market position.

I can well believe the current Bloomberg reports as there was a reason to have a discussion about such a merger before and Rio is now in a better place in terms of commodity prices now.

Curiously these discussions in my reading are positive for us PIs as SIs now have a small window of opportunity to do a deal for the asset before any merger gets progressed. Indeed the possibility might encourage this. Should Glencore wish to discourage such then they might have to make us an offer themselves possibly an all share offer. I.e. a scenario where

Glencore and Rio wish to keep the asset in the merged business.

Another possibility is that Rio become the SI?

Wow. The mind boggles.

The idea of a process is pretty important to avoid anyone making allegations against our BOD or anyone political or anyone connected with the SI. Our shares are tightly held largely by insiders consequently they have legal risk. Glencore has been through the mill on a series of governance related issues and now has a belt and braces approach to stuff like this. Our "process" doesn't seem out of place.

Price is neither here nor there in terms of relevance at this stage. Although it is a stressor for holders.

I am expecting newsflow prior to the 11th February. Is that how others are reading this?

Customer "Where’s your bin?"

Proprietor "Me bin Hong Kong."

Customer "No, where’s your wheely bin?"

Proprietor "Me wheely bin Hong Kong."