The Rockwood coal is certainly high carbon (high energy) coal with low volatile content. It falls into the category of PCI coal.
This is the same as how CLR's coal falls into the category of 'coking coal'.
These respective coals have the qualities that deem them to be 'PCI coal' and 'coking coal'.
However, ash is also one of the qualities of coal. The higher the ash content the higher the CAPEX & OPEX due to higher need for washing.
Further, the higher the ash & the higher the washing, the lower the mining yield, which increases the OPEX per saleable tonne.
To eliminate your contradiction, use EOC's Meteor Downs as an example. It is DSO coal, which does not require any washing. Why? Because its raw ash content is 9.5% max, which is not only low ash for PCI & coking coal but extremely low ash for thermal coal. Therefore the OPEX of Meteor Downs ($37/t) is very low because the ash content is very low.
Personally, I do not blame the company. That I ever invested in EOC is my fault. I should have known better but was negligent. Gazman put alot of time into educating me about coal & i should have known better. I negligently assumed the Rockwood coal was the same as the MCC coal.
In brief, coal that can only be washed down to 11.3 % must be very high ash coal. It will probably require a very high CAPEX and high OPEX operation to do this.
At these prices, I still hold my shares in hope. But at these prices, it must be quite obvious by now, Rockwood is not a Tier 1 asset.
BHP would not buy it. RIO or Xstrata would not buy it. Only a crazy Chinese foreign investment arm, which makes bad investment after bad investment, would buy it.
At current coal prices, it is probably not economic enough to justify the risk. Google 'PCI prices' and deals are currently being made at $120/t to $160/t.
Rockwood appears to have the characteristics of a dog (but often dogs of bad character eventually find an owner).
Good luck with this horrible company called Endocoal, which somehow managed to suck investors into a float to buy 28,333,333 shares at 60 cents to finance 90,293,998 seed capital shares bought at 9 cents each.
From, day 1, this company was for losers; who had no idea about investing. And yes, I got sucked in also.
To think AMCI Capital, George Soros, Gina Reinhardt & Nathan Tinkler also got sucked in by Endocoal is laughable. Just like us, they have no idea and are probably looking for some Chinese or Indian sucker to sell the assets to.
AMCI Capital is also invested in AQA, that have 2nd class assets (such as high ash coking coal in QLD and 55% grade iron ore in Pilbara) and are trying to arrange Chinese money to finance it.
But BHP & RIO would not be intereset in AQA's assets because they rejected them previously.
EOC Price at posting:
28.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
