Thanks 823, very good article with some interesting comments from Tim. Regarding Toliara:
“We’re very clear that it’s the best undeveloped mineral sands asset in the world,” Carstens says.
"...the scope for this thing to be much bigger and for us be mining for 60-plus years is significant. And that allows us to think about the project as something that can be scaled up over time."
“We’re seeing a similar capex and earnings profile at this stage"
“...we can see a high first-quartile revenue-to-cost ratio for Toliara – somewhere north of three"
Regarding Kwale:
“We expect to see the net project financing debt eliminated towards the end of 2018"
"... the current mine life to five years, which is expected to become at least six after a reserve update"
"The next phase of exploration drilling at Kwale is planned for late this quarter ... We have done a little bit of work there, incidental to drilling some community boreholes, so we do know there is mineralisation there. But have no sense of the quantum at this stage. That’s going to be an exciting development over the course of 2018"
Regarding the project team:
"Base has kept intact the technical group that delivered Kenya’s first large-scale mining project"
That's good news - the Ausenco engineers I know who worked on the Kwale design spoke very highly of the Base engineering team.
BSE Price at posting:
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