Aussie $ Impact, page-13

Mole, your assumptions on total cash costs I believe are way overstretched. GBG would be long gone I suspect if break even was anywhere around the US$100 mark. The chinese financiers would never have agreed to the additional ongoing funding if that was the case. The place would've shut. The Chinese may be in desperate need of our Mag but they are not financial mugs. And that additional funding was provided at a time when IO was around $50. It is now around $80....and with a very favourable Aussie dollar cross rate.

Costs for the Sept16 quarter were US$61 WMT (excluding depreciation, amortisation, admin, sale, royalties, ocean freight, interest and financing costs). The big UNKNOWN is the financing costs component. Having said all that - I still cant see how all this group of additional costs can equate to another US$40 per WMT to get anywhere near you $100 assumption.

The December Q report expected in the last week of Jan will be very interesting reading.

PS: regarding the future movement of the IO spot price going up or down. Considering that all supposed experts have been predicting a $40-$50 range for the foreseeable future and they have had egg all over their face with the bullish run of IO in the last six months. And they are now once again predicting a much lower IO price. I'm going out on a limb and predict the exact opposite.