Ann: Iluka 2018 Half Year Report (4D), page-25

Agree with everything you saying Ash.

But with ILU increasing throughput at Eucla by 30% and bringing forward the mining at Ambrosia from 2022 to 2019, zircon production will drop off sharply by the mid 2020's. They'll need an additional zircon resource if they want to maintain current levels of production, so they either need to either find one, or buy one.

One thing to note is there are a few funds like Blackrock and BNP Paribas who are common shareholders in both ILU and SFX. They may see a benefit in the SFX being absorbed by ILU (though perhaps the minority shareholders would disagree).

Time is running out and they need to do something to increase their zircon resource.