Member Info for Catbert

I wouldn't rule out the Italians either for off take or a stake they have a couple of projects Hydra and Piombino. They were in talks with Cameroon prior to their mining minister's misfortune and Mbalam's expropriation.

The Mattei Plan may be a route into possible funding of part of the project (possibly local Hydro) and it is also noteworthy that they were recently visited by big Den.

Some interesting posts here on Arise. Researching them is certainly a worthwhile endeavour. I'm sure most holders here have been busy on this task.

Circling back to the port RNS one thing struck me which I had ignored on my first reading. It was the words "among other items".

Now these are certainly ambiguous words to use. But what do they mean? For me it was a que to gas light myself into a wild fantasy world of near infinite possibilities, to quote John Lenon "you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one". The follow up to these little day dreams of mine is usually to give myself a stern talking to in the mirror then spalsh my face with cold water. Before I do anything rash with my hard earned money.

Yet the intrigue remains. What are these "other items" My assumption is that they are not connected with the port piece otherwise presumably they would have been included in the port RNS. I may or may not be right about this.

Next up is how Arise describe themselves as being in the business of "integrated infrastructure" Hmm. Does that mean they might finance a slurry pipeline or hydro electric plant?

Then there is the presence of the AFC in all of this who are one of the financial backers of Arise. For any of you who are involved in the tedious and protracted story of the Tulu Kapi Gold Mine, AFC are the Development bank who are one of the co lenders on that mine project.

Other posters have already covered the Fortesque angle as it relates to Arise. February can't come soon enough.

Fortunately I'm not actually a cat IRL otherwise all this curiousity would be my undoing.

Thoughts?

GLA

If strategics buy in as a minority holding, Glencore will be able to revalue their holding on their balance sheet.

Glencore stand to win almost every way. If the project gets developed they could well end up as minority holders and in this case they will have a producing asset which they have not had to spend any cash on to get into production. From the perspective of free cash flow this could end up being one of their best ROI's.

Glencore has spent the last several years trying to repair their balance sheet and this may have been one of the reasons why they didn't just attempt to develop this themselves-too expensive (although they use the reframe of their being more of a trading entity than a miner). In reality they are both.

"Strategic partner process" .

It begs a series of questions. Firstly it doesn't say "strategic investor" although the term could include such. Some posters last night assumed that it was an announcement of the SI. It may not be.

I'm wondering if the principle motive here is to evidence a process to prove that the Directors haven't been induced to misuse their authority by some vested interest or other. They do hold a lot of shares and were a deal to get done the last thing they want as they sit on their Caribbean Islands is to be fighting a series of legal battles with investors who are saltly about whatever deal was done. Or to have any of their partners undermined by such accusations.

Being accused of some untoward action or other would have the effect of smearing both their good names and those of our partners too. None of the organisations involved would want this. Even an accusation these days is sufficient to damage reputations. This type of process might be a mitigation of this sort of problem.

My guess is that a secondary motive is the promote their partners and the project as a whole as the partners are the beneficiaries of PR and any investment which may come from this as well as the prestige that participation in such a project brings. Plus there is clearly a political dynamic. It is not just about being good but also being seen to be good too.

It may be the case that an SI or SIs have been selected already or are at an advanced stage of selection nonetheless given the size of these organisations and the prevalence of historical governance ambiguities with these sorts of projects it is clearly a very important step for all parties to be able to show publically how the process has been conducted and to demonstrate that the utmost probity has been applied.

This is my read anyway. I could be horribly wrong of course. As for the long lead time, this might just be a simple matter of staying in front of the news flow in particular if the event is an in person one a venue will be required plus there are multiple parties plus this is about being open about what is going on.

So there's no need for an secret squirrel stuff. IMHO.

It's rainy season in Gabon. Belinga has to shift the product over 100km on unsealed roads to get it to a railway. So whilst they can get some production done ahead of a project such as Simandou they still have a logistical problem to solve for the longer term. One suspects that shipping is only possible in the dry season.

Thanks for the post Analytical. It bests the pitfiful levels of communications from the company by some degree.

Cardo's question is the right one. Whilst anything could have happened one clue we have is the current interest in our partners other Zambian holdings from Manara Minerals.

Looking at this deal the Saudi's appear to be interested in a minority stake in the Zambian copper assets of FQ.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTGdzYg8rrs&t=4s

Our partner is in a tricky situation due to the shut down of Cobre

https://globalflowcontrol.com/newsroom/first-quantum-engages-in-partnership-discussions-for-key-zambian-assets/

My conclusion and it may be way off so DYOR is that we are not the top priority for FQ, however a recapitalised FQ with a partner like Manara which is interested in copper exploration could nonetheless be a positive for holders here.

Defering the decision on the licence renewals until after a deal is concluded with our partners might be the reason for a lack of news here and for the continued silence from our BOD.

Indeed a deferral would seem a logical step under the circumstances.

Perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part and admittedly it is little more than guesswork but it wouldn't be our place to speak out of turn when we are the most junior partner in this set up.

GLA.

I can see your point Mithrel however I'm going to vote for the proposed for one simple reason.

Whilst there is a potential for a different type of funding if we do go with an alternative route this will mean that we shall need to renegotiate the deal with every single one of our partners which includes the Ethiopian Government. This could take months and opens us up to potentially having different terms imposed on us by our partners or to our reaching some sort of new as yet unimagined impasse.

My own view is that whilst what has been proposed isn't ideal for PIs now is not the time to kick off now that we have all other parties agreed to the way forwards.

Better to suck it up and get this over the line.

The consolation is that the underground potential will be revealed during the build of TK and Konso has the potential to be massive.

Prior to the last price surge there was an obeservable phenomenom of a large numbers of small trades. This seems to be the case again here. My theory and many will disagree with me is that these are African buyers either BCM or relatives of BCM or local people who know what is coming out of the ground.

The fact that we went deeper than planned on the first drill is likley to be good news IMHO. It potentially indicates that we were in mineralisation and if we were we wouldn't have wanted to stop until we were out of it again.

There are other explanantions too. One being that we had miscalculated the geometry of the ore body another being that we didn't hit anything good until we got deep. Based on the other statements made i.e. that drilling uncovered what was found in the trenching programme it seems that the most likely explanantion was that we were still in mineralisation.

This is pure speculation on my part or perhaps wishful thinking.

In the absence of solid news the share price here is given to roving somewhat as most LTHs know.

What is noteworthy about Mbe is that we have a lot of surface geology done and what displays at surface appears to be of significant scale. As soon as we get the first drill results this thing has the potential to go totally nuts assuming that what is underground is as good as or better than what is displayed at the surface. This is the question we all want answered. Until it is the share price movements don't mean anything IMHO.

GLA and a Happy New Year to all LTH's.

Spot on karl345345.

The institution isn't small either and has expertise in the field. Based on the controls and the drill data so far it is already possible to model the resource and with more drilling the type of predictive model it is possible to build now can be improved as it becomes based on less and less assumptions and more on known facts.

My assumption is that they (the II) have built such a model for themselves and are basing their decesion making on this.

This isn't an Ni -43 101 accuracy type of model but one concocted of more basic maths and known geometry. With this approach it is possible to say that we have at least XYZ resource and with a known control such as the basement fault it is also possible to make some assumptions to create a top end for an estimate. Therefore as we stand a competent person could create a reasonably credible minimum and maximum resource estimate.

Given the depths, thicknesses and grades some of the mine economics can also be predicted to a reasonable degree of accurancy too. Using these approached it is possible to create a rather rough PFS.

In most exploration plays the fundamental question being asked is "Is this a mine or not?".

In the case of Pepas my guess is that this question has already been answered moreorless (not that a proper process won't be followed in order to obtain the right investment for the processing thereof).

The question being asked now is how big of a mine will it be. This seems a little arrogant to propose at such an early stage, but with the uniqueness of the deposit there seems little doubt.

Indeed, if this type of deposit isn't economic then what is? (If you want to look at it from the inverter's persepective).

It is virtually unheard of for an institution to buy into a small cap explorer like this but if you can calculate a min and max NAV and have a reasonable degree of certainty that a mine will be built then the investment decision can be made with a degree more certainty than might be possible with a typical explorer.

The presence of the II so early in the journey is not to be underestimated. IMHO.

GLA DYOR and Merry Christmas to you all.

They seem to have cut the spread from 28% a few weeks ago to 2.374% now. What do people think?

Possibly Mitch984. The Chinese are largely buying for themselves others have their own sales and marketing operations, however someone like Manara would be a beneficiary of such an arrangement.

The Simandou deal is also of relevance although with that project there is also 560 Km dual track railway line to develop with 12 stations 200 plus bridges and four tunnels which would be more costly than a slurry pipe. 46.6% of Simandou was sold for $1.3bn although this was later sold by the buyer to it's parent company for nearer $2bn. The overall development cost of the project at Simandou however is $17bn.

One of the advantages of Zanaga besides a much lower development cost is the sales and marketing capacity of Glencore.

According to the last Bibemi RNS we had completed 42 out of 62 holes with drilling expected to complete in Q1 2025 so we are still waiting on drills and labs from Bibemi plus a possible MRE update. We're in discussions with the authorities about a mining convention there my guess is early 2025 for any real movement there.

I'm not expecting much on Senala as we're in a minority position and it needs more work. It's not an easy one to resolve and if we rush we'll get short changed. It might be best for us to negotiate a deal to buy Managem out and so if we sell the whole shebang to someone bigger we can realise the gain on full exit. In the short term it gives us some jurisdictional derisking.

Mbe is next up. Not sure when we'll hear on that maybe we can get hole by hole reporting. The share price here can be listless between the major events. HawaiifiveO is right on that point for sure.

I'm happy to sit and wait. News soon would be good but it is what it is. GLA .

The two next steps the pipeline and the strategic investor seem to be the obvious topics for conclusion come the New Year.

Zanaga at the recent AGM created but have not allocated an additional 40% of their shares. My guess is that these are for the Strategic investor - probably in return for the SI putting up the $1.94Bn needed to build the project. If I'm correct (and there's no guarantee of that) then this would value the remainder at $2.91 Bn which would be a bargain price.

This project has a production cost of $32 / ton and should be selling product at $150 ton margin. Initially 12m tons scaling up to 30m tons per annum and whist the mine is being built at 1m tons per annum of the ROM product.

This thing will be spewing out free cash flow at a far better rate than nearly any business on the planet once operational.

The big inflection point will be the signing of the strategic of whom there are a few candidates. Some point to China and doubtless the Chinese will play a big part in this project due to their technical expertise and in country connections however The Chinese already have Simandou and Mbalam. My guess is an outside chance for Fortesque due to their connections with Gabon and our port partnership but if I had to put money on it. Ma'aden, as they have the financial warchest to do this and have statements of intent in the public domain that they wish to develop an Iron Ore business albeit one with European focus. They would also need the Chinese technical experts in the project not just for the mine but also for the downstream processing which would be possible due to the region's impressive energy resources.

Once a strategic investor is announced, whomever that may be, this is going to go nuts.

The port element is important only becasue it implies that the pipeline can be built and the timimg of this announcement coincides with the Presidents announcement that private individuals wont be permitted to hold up national infrastructure projects. These are very strong signals of intent rather than categorical green lights for the project. The signing of a SI would be a clear green light and we are moving towards that point imminently or so it would seem.

All IMHO DYOR GLA.

This gets better and better.

Bless his shining heart, Gagan Gupta and his business also has 18% of Ivindo the JV in Gabon with Fortesque which holds the Belinga Iron Ore Project. What a good partner for Zanaga to have.

Just the pipeline and our partner to pony up the cash.

This makes the President's recent statement about people holding up national infrastructure projects possibly even more germane- was he talking about the pipeline? It looks like he's handing this over to the legistature to make the laws to presumably make whatever compulsory purchases are needed in order to get these sorts of projects moving?

Schwinggg!

Hold onto your hats ladies and gentlemen.

GLA.

You don't build a port infrastructure unless you have the means to get whatever you are loading onto a ship to the port.

Very good news indeed!

My AI estimates from the trenching results at Mbe 2-4 moz.

It did say that with a bunch of caveats attached so don't get too carried away- nonetheless the stuff at surface indicates an extensive area of mineralisation plus there are already indicators of satellite deposits around the main areas.

The initial scissor drills will give us the geometry and thicknesses and once we have that data it will be possible to construct a rough and ready MRE of the sort where we can say that we have at least XYZ resource using basic maths.

There are some other features that are shared by orogenic gold deposits such as Fosterville which are evidenced at Mbe.

More from the AI (Perplexity) when asked to compare the two deposits (just for a bit of fun).

"Gold mineralization: Both deposits are primarily gold-bearing. The Mbe project has reported significant gold grades, with some samples yielding up to 134.10 g/t Au from surface samples and artisanal workings.

Structural control: The Mbe deposit shows evidence of structural control on mineralization, with gold deposition enhanced at structural intersections. This is a common feature in many gold deposits, including Fosterville.

Quartz veins: The Mbe deposit contains high-grade, sulphide-rich quartz veins and veinlets. Quartz veins are also present in the Fosterville deposit, although the search results don't provide specific information about Fosterville's mineralogy.

Alteration: The Mbe deposit exhibits a wide halo of pervasive albite alteration. Alteration is typically associated with gold mineralization in many deposits, including Fosterville, though the specific alteration types may differ.

Potential for high-grade zones: Both deposits show potential for high-grade gold zones. At Mbe, some samples have returned grades of up to 134.10 g/t Au, while Fosterville is known for its high-grade ore."

Fosterville is noted for the high grades found at depth, indeed this was the really big dicovery there. It will be interesting to see if we move towards a follow up campaign targeting the depth of Mbe.

Besides the breadth of the surface finds we also have the grade potential indicated by the 134.10 g/t sample which was recovered. A big intersection or a hit at bonanza grades are real possibilities here. Both would be marvellous.

GLA.

They have issued 450m new share or about 40% of the company which they can now allocate as they see fit.

They did something similar last year too however this year we have now completed the FS and pre FEED studies and if some party or parties were interested they would have been able to conduct extensive due diligence on us with a greater level of accuracy than ever before.

Plus the clock is running here. We're ready to get into the FEED stage and if we want production by 2030 we need to move on this in the next few months. I think we needed to be ready last year because a deal could have been done once the FS was completed. This year we're more than ready with the enhanced insights of the pre FEED work.

TheDealBreaker might be correct- however by 2030 the forecast is that the world will be 70mt/pa short of the product we'll be making.

Zanaga is the trembling bride waiting at the alter. IMHO.

Hopefully our prince is on his way.

Https://www.arabnews.com/node/2580986/amp

Just a general chat apparently finance ministers of both countries plus Saudi ambassador on 27th November 2024.

Quite a long way to go just to eat Ferro Roche and drink coffee together IMHO. Hmmm.