Sabine The best way for a miner to optimise its marketing is to...

Sabine

The best way for a miner to optimise its marketing is to do what RIO does. RIO created what it calls Pilbara Blend, which is the world's most traded classification of iron ore. Pilbara Blend is made up of ore from about a dozen RIO mines. Developing mines that are critical to creating the Pilbara Blend product for RIO, and similarly for BHP and FMG, are where NWH can land good contracts.

Whether an innovative technology emerges to decontaminate ore (remove phosphorous,sulphur and aluminium) at the mining end, rather than at the steel-mill end, I cannot say. In the long run the world is going to have to use more magnetite ore, because there is so much of it, as opposed to DSO haematite, and that requires mine-site beneficiation. After mine-site beneficiation (using magnetism to separate the iron from the silicate), the resultant product is highly prised by the steel mills, especially those in China.

Cheap electricity is required to make the beneficiation process economically viable. Cheap mine-site electricity is an area that the likes of MND could get into on a larger scale than now is the case. In the north of WA there are locations with massive tidal flows, but one rarely hears much of that potential. There is also natural gas to replace diesel, and that would mean pipelines, the laying of which could be an NWH line of business. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are a type of nuclear fission reactor which could be viable on remote mine sites – also something that the likes of MND could expand into. I know you hold MND, which is why I dropped that stock's name.

The topics of the previous two paragraphs are too long term for shareholders to consider, other than those seeking an alternative to conjugating Latin verbs as a mental exercise.