Member Info for okenia

There's quite a bit of discussion out there on the shift from sulphide to laterite mines to make up the shortfall. A reasonable starting point is the 'geology for investors' website, but a bit of deeper googling hits a rich seam. "Nickel Laterites: The World�s Largest Source of Nickel Nickel is found in two types of deposits; Nickel laterites and magmatic sulfide deposits. Although nickel Laterites make up 70% of the world�s nickel reserves, few of them become producing mines. Over the last 60 years magmatic sulfide nickel deposits produced 60% of the world�s nickel. In the last 10 years, the production of nickel from magmatic sulfide deposits has slowly decreased and begun to plateau. With the global consumption of nickel growing at a rate of 4% per year (and increasing), it has now become apparent that new sources of nickel need to be found." https://www.geologyforinvestors.com/nickel-laterites/

0.55p was the Ask price when I got the call. (The spread was 0.5/0.55 at the time). Yes it's 0.6/0.65 now but when people signed on the dotted line it wasn't, and it was a premium to the Mid price of 0.525.

As for having to play Tarzan and walk for weeks to get to the asset (according to booboo), well again the reality is vey different "Transport - 120km flat and mostly sealed road to Oro Bay deep water port � a rare advantage" So make MHP on site, truck to Oro Bay, load onto boat and export. Job done. https://miningmaven.com/pdf//Presentation%20March%202012%20V18%20abridged.pdf

Colin - because laterites are the next wave of nickel mines. If you had the choice of course you'd do sulphide. However, those are largely run out now so majors are being forced to look for the next wave, and that will be laterite. You're already seeing some mines come into production. So when a major is looking for new inventory to replace that which it has depleted, and it can't find any more sulphide deposits (the current problem), then it'll be laterite they go for. That's the first component of the answer to your question. The other is that nickel has been very low price until recently so majors haven't been looking to acquire and develop new assets. That's changing now the nickel price has turned the corner. Indeed at the LME London conference at the end of last year they did a delegate poll for what metal would move the most in 2018 (zinc and cobalt were the winners for 2017 of course). Number one by a long chalk was nickel - it's the metal for 2018 according to the analysts who work in this space. Thus two things. Exhaustion of sulphide deposits and the shift to laterites is just getting going, and interest will move in as the nickel price continues to firm up. Those two things weren't in place until recently but are increasingly so.

And to illustrate the point that Mambare is a very very very big asset (and would certainly be of the scale and size that would flicker the needle of a major): To give some sense of the scale of this asset, it's worth looking at the amount of contained metal and whether there is enough to flicker the radar of a major. From the RNS: "1.53million tonnes of in-situ Nickel and 146,000 tonnes of in-situ Cobalt. Given the current metal prices of nickel (US$12,600/t) and cobalt (US$75,300)" (that's just for 3% remember). Do the math and that works out to be $18.36 billion value for the contained nickel $11 billion value for the contained cobalt. So 3% of the deposit already has $30 billion worth of contained Ni-Co metal. And with significant expansion capacity to give a very long LOM that again would warrant a major spending the capex on it. I think Vale's precursor spent $2-3bn on the Goro capex, but these sort of numbers put that into context. Everything about these mines is "telephone numbers" complete with international dialling codes! One final comment is that RGM's sister company has "form" in this sort of play, with the Tshipi manganese mine. Yes they got diluted down as the project progressed, but they still ended up with 1.6% of a billion-dollar asset that's one of the lowest-cost and largest manganese mines on the planet, and that stake is worth a lot to a company of RRR's size. You end up with a small slice of a very very, VERY large pie if all goes to plan (like it did at Tshipi) and that's how returns are made.

Let's step back a second. Most (but not all) Tier 1 nickel mines at the moment are nickel SULPHIDE ores. The metallurgy is easier. The problem is that most of the sulphide deposits have been found and are being mined out. As a result, the majors are moving to trying the somewhat harder (but far from impossible) laterite deposits. The metallurgy is a bit more of a faff but its not impossible, as mines in production show. Now DNI are developing a process that may be more successful/economic than the existing methods to deal with laterite deposits, but that's more the cherry on the cake. At the end of the day Mambare is a laterite deposit and you'd process it like other laterites. As to PNG's inability (apparently) to host a laterite mine. Well they do actually already have one in production, high up in the hills, including a 135km slurry pipe down to the processes works at the coast near Madang. When you're dealing with an asset worth many billions of dollars a major doesn't blanch at difficult locations (e.g. the big porphyry at Wafi Golpu is hardly the most accessible place on the planet). You just cost it in and get on with it. The laterite mine in PNG is Ramu Nickel. It has a reserve of 124Mt of ore at 1% Ni (so almost identical in size to Mambare's JORC) http://www.ramunico.com/plus/list.php?tid=240 http://www.highlandspacific.com/current-projects/ramu-nickel There's also a laterite mine at Goro (run by Vale) in New Caledonia which is just SE of PNG, again hardly the most accessible place on the planet (probably worse that Mambare given its island location). Goro contains 5.92 million tonnes of nickel metal. To give some sense of scale of this Vale asset, Mambare has a JORC resource that is 1.53 million tonnes of in-situ nickel metal, and that only covers 3% of the mineralised plateau. It's easily as big, if not bigger, than the Vale asset. Now let's be clear. RGM aren't holding Mambare because they see themselves as eventually being a billion-dollar mcap company owning and running a mine at Mambare. This is an optionality play. At some point in the (probably not too distant future) a major on the hunt for its next big, Tier 1 scale nickel deposit will acquire Mambare and spend the billions in capex necessary to get this MASSIVE asset into production. What RGM's job is, is to hold Mambare as an option through the down-cycle (done), and then let it increase in value until it's bought. They might want to do some work on it to further daylight the scale of the asset (since only 3% of it has been drilled). A major would no doubt like to see some wide-spaced holes punched over the full plateau. And that's where RGM can now add value.

And a big show of confidence by the Directors, who are subscribing for �100,000.

Yes it's just range trading, and with not a lot of liquidity. Most people are just waiting and some are picking up if it drifts down. It's easy to do small deals that generate a RNS for the traders - but pulling off a proper deal, with scale, is a different kettle of fish. The longer we wait and the more the company sweats it, the more I think it ain't going to be some pisant two-bit deal. And so we wait.

Oh yes, just quietly waiting for them to sign off the first deal. DL doesn't get paid until they do, which must be focussing the mind! He's very busy at moment

Yes, what's up?

Any evidence to support that allegation that Scott is defrauding RGM by double-dipping? Go on booboo, spell out what you mean.

Ffs booboo is the interweb broken where you live? Better question: how many Audi do Silver Car have and how much is Audi buying the company for? (Yes that's two questions, view one as your 'starter for ten')

Curzon all paid for. Do keep up, booboo

booboo: Silver Car are the nearest analogy to White Car and clearly the model that White Car are using. Both are premium vehicle airport rental businesses, that use an app and have a dedicated single-brand of vehicle style. Silver Car uses Audis, White Car uses Teslas. It's clear White Car (even down to the name!) wants to follow the same path that Silver Car has taken, but just using Teslas instead of Audis. Thus to get a feel for a potential forward roadmap for White Car, the best place to start is what has gone before, which is Silver Car. Indivestor - I'd love to but for its sins, RGM has invested in a car rental business so sadly we now have to discuss Collision Damage Waivers and the like! Sorry.

See, you DO use twitter!

That's OK, if people would prefer to read your posts as opposed to reading-across from the Financial Times articles about Silver Car, then they are welcome to do so. FT versus Zumore ... hmmm ... DD ... which will I pick? Zumore of course!

Oh Neil Howell Don't know him and don't know if he attended the AGM You really should join twitter, you could then ask him !

Zumore, re your comment re Andrew buying into RRR and not RGM and you interpreting that as a lack of confidence by him in RGM: sorry to spoil that narrative but RGM view themselves as being in a close period at the moment (at least due to the Legacy Hill due diligence taking place, as per RNSes past). Whether Andrew buys after that is delivered, who knows. We'll just have to wait and see! Now then, what's the CDW on a Tesla model S?

I didn't attend the AGM but then again I don't have a disclosable 'big boys' stake (in RGM or indeed anything else!). Some day, Rodney ...

Who's Luke?