Mars, Definitely the lighter shade of dark grey. The general...

Mars,

Definitely the lighter shade of dark grey. The general feel around the place is that the worst is over, how long the bottom will be set in I don't know.

It's interesting that the benefactors of it all don't seem to be the surviving mining services companies but the labour hire companies. I believe the next part of cost savings for the majors is the re-hiring of labour through the labour hire groups. The hired contractor will on a lot less wages and conditions than the permanents before them were on (eg machinery operators that will now be on a flat rate and that have to pay their own super, leave, insurances etc and when there is machinery unit downtime through services etc they will be sent off-lease to wait by the phone for when they are needed agian). The labour hire company charges a margin on top of the hire rate and the company gets cheap, flexible labour.

I suspect Capex spending will still be subdued for a while yet but.

Warrigals