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you are far too easily persuaded; I think the SP should be 10p now and certainly will not let mine go for single figures. Special situations like MWA happen rarely selling out too cheap will be a missed opportunity.

I think the Chinese see the growth as so strong that they want to takeaway the lot.

They were certainly very strange but that comes from the fact they bought in at 5.5p I suspect. They will want to take control of the company and may well make a bid. It will obviously be well above the 5.5p a share they paid when the mines were on care and maintenance. It does add another dimension to any possible exit for current holders. Thinking about the scenario where Ning may walk away from 28% by selling. I doubt that would happen, he was taking it far too personally. Botha made an interesting comment about the matters that should be discussed at board meetings if you were to turn up. I have little fear for this situation and would rather focus on the production and margin, the rest will sort itself.

Yes it will be around showing support for the board or the consensus of the board. Not very democratic but there to mitigate against the fact that MWA did not know exactly who they were getting into bed with.

I suspect if they do not get some concession or taste some blood they will sell their 28%. From what I saw this relationship was beyond repair and either Mpinga goes or they do. The Chinese spoke right through Stuart Morris presentation and twice he told them to stop. One joker was even talking on his phone. I have been to many AGMs and I have never seen a board so divided.

We need to get Q2 through first. It was quite clear that we can expect significant improvement in Operational performance in H2. The tailing pilot has not really worked out so far with weaker recoveries that hoped. Kalaa did point out that he is hopeful that they can get decent recoveries with more tinkering with the milling and process. They are still planning to fund the smelter with debt which will be announced soon. The smelter work is progressing, clearing is done and they are settling the last engineering plans. All looking good apart from the Chinese who were rude and obviously at odds with the board. The body language was aggressive from both sides. Botha and Kalaa did say that they did all they could to try to stop that happening at the AGM. Some investors who were obviously nursing huge losses for constantly interrupting and asking questions. One in particular was very disruptive and just seemed to like the sound of his own voice arguing every point.

No problem I will post more when I have a proper keyboard this phone drives me mad.

Sorry meant Ning. A7.5% shareholder and I believe on the board of the 21% holder. The challenge was fine but the timing was poor, I suspect the relationship is beyond simple repair.

Gents I left prior to the result of the poll to re elect Stuart Morris. Mr Lim hijacked the meeting to protest about the lack of dividend that deeply shames him. I thought he was going to reach for the ceremonial sword. I had a chat with Kalaa. The tailings pilot is still testing, with some issues they are working through, Kalaa made the point that this was exactly the purpose of the trial. Bnc and Trojan are performing strongly. Mr Lim was critical of the board for not hedging but again missed the point. Lim is a liability in my view.

I am also at the Agm. There is something of a revolt going on with the Chinese stating fundamentally incorrect views. FR costs down 21% to 1088 c3. So far in July and August 11300 oz. At Trojan 10000 tons still expected for full year. In July and August 1296 tons at c3 14302.

I doubt we will see c3 at $1000 oz until the improvements are complete and production increases beyond 16k ozs from the underground operation. Hopefully the tailing project can add another 5k ozs a quarter in due course. There is very little hurry for Freda Rebecca, the improvements will be complete or near complete now so we can expect improvements in H2.

I suspect they will have to pay more than that to get involved now.

The problem most smaller producers like Zimbabwe will have is that their economy is finely balanced that they simply will not be able to do what Indonesia has done. They may also not have the electricity supply to fuel large smelters and refineries. The Zimbabwean economy is absolutely on it's knees again and there is talk of civil unrest as the army may not being paid. Of course they cannot just print more money as they would in the past as they have adopted the US$ which is in very short supply on the street. I do think local beneficiation as a concept will spread wider and it will continue to pressure supply much of which does not go anywhere near a LME approved warehouse but straight to an end user. As suppliers we have the perfect storm for Nickel developing and all we need is industrial demand to lift in 2015-6-7 and we will see a good 5 to 10 years of raised values. I certainly think $20000 a ton will become the basement and it could go towards $30000 a ton again on industrial demand. I suspect that Zimbabwe will look at enhancing the tax on exporting unrefined material in the short term which will increase demand for the use of the smelter and fuel the restart of the refinery.

This quarter last year Freda Rebecca produced 17,536 ozs with C3 at $1053. That was at a lower grade than they are achieving now.

The costs were high because of the lower production however the grade is expected to be maintained at higher levels so all they need is some scale and the all in costs will be more like $1000. It will not take much to achieve scale; most of the costs are fixed so scale is the key I suspect we will hear very soon from the tailing pilot; they have been surveying the 13m tons of tailings and there will be a resource estimate very soon.

Strong end to the day. AGM next week, smelter restart is well underway, The current quarter ends at the end of this month. MWA has been treading water for too long now. The move to 6p looks inevitable

Mpinga has already told us where he expects the Nickel to be; at or very close to 2000 tons. A chunky improvement on Q1 but still well short of 2200 tons. The current quarter should be the last that involves the rehab programme at Trojan. A solid quarter at Freda Rebecca is definitely required and something positive about the tailing project. Looking across I see other producers manage 10-20k oz pa from tailing re-working. That would certainly be very welcome here. Freda Rebecca is all about scale; they mined 100k tons more than they processed last quarter so the mining end of the business is de-risked this quarter as even with underground upgrade work they started a month ahead. 15k oz in the quarter will give us nice margin even at current low gold values.

Wuffle I am interested in how the indigenisation of Freda Rebecca will be achieved. Clearly the indigenisation is on FR only; BNC is already considered to have completed the process and the DRC exploration/resource is not subject to the process. So how will MWA separate FR. An option must be to float FR as a standalone entity then apportion shares. That will help to value FR in the same way the listing in Zimbabwe helps to value bind.zw. I no MWA is at a huge discount but currently MWA has technical risk at FR and care and maintenance commitments at Klipspringer as well as expense in DRC with the gold resource and on-going work. All of these negatives and neutrals are in the process of becoming positives.

I did not worry too much about tax, it is a given and there will be plenty of losses to bring forwards to assist. I am not much concerned if they make profit from producing third party Nickel or they use that to lower the average cost per ton it all amounts to the same thing. The return is great today but in six months when the smelter starts work the return will be massively enhanced. The only question is when will the AIM recognise this value. I do not think 10p will look silly right now.

The cost of production from Concentrate to Nickel leach alloy is $251 a ton; concentrate is at 9% so about 11 tons for each ton produced costing say $2700 a ton and saving $1000 a ton transport. That $251 is based on the reduced capacity, what would it be at full capacity, lets say safely $200. At $18000 a ton BNC pay Glencore $6300, in a 15% deal for Nickel leach alloy they would pay $2700 a ton saving $3600 a ton minus $1700 (smelting minus transport) is $1900 additional margin on the current situation plus the fine for exporting. With the third party material forcing down the costs or offsetting the costs against income the additional margin is likely to be $2400+ in my opinion. That is $19.2m a year additional profit and the added value of a working smelter minus the cost of transporting the Nickel leach alloy to market for sale to Glencore plus the saving on the Government fine. Who knows how close that is but it seems to make sense to me.