Heraclitus, i'm not involved with the company apart from being a...

Heraclitus, i'm not involved with the company apart from being a shareholder. Thus this is only my view:
I hope the bold text does reflect an advanced discussion with a party to implement the next stage of Sea Dragon, but i know nothing on whether the discussion is any closer.
The acquisition of the Exmouth plant seems to have been a fortuitous opportunity that hadn't been envisaged earlier. It effectively advances the development by about 12 months, reduces all up costs by a couple of million and also enables immediate establishment of a bio-secure hatchery, already permitted.
The strategic partner probably is a large offshore group already involved in food and distribution, possibly from china, japan or usa. There is a requirement to have a large group involved as the scale of the project is huge - ca. $400 million capex. I imagine COZ aims to be the local australian entity, co-ordinating the development, for a fee, plus equity agreed with the major group who might take up equity in COZ, sort of soft-financing placement. That's what i envisage, but i'm really just taking a stab in the dark.