After reading another post which mentioned other iron ore companies' progress, I sent an email to Giralia today saying that I was concerned about the perceived tardiness of the company when it come to acually mining any of its major iron ore resoures.
Here is Mike Joyce's reply:
Thank you for your enquiry. Giralia's strategy for its iron ore assets has been consistent and has been repeated in several presentations released to market in the last year or so. The Company has 7 iron ore projects in Western Australia which are being drilled to establish iron ore resources. Despite delays due to permitting drill programs this work is nearing completion, with initial resources announced for 4 projects and first resource for the Mt Webber discovery expected within days. Scoping level mining studies have been commissioned for 2 projects. The projects will then be evaluated on a case by case basis. Iron ore is all about infrastructure, and only projects with access to rail transport or close enough to to a port with spare capacity to allow road transport can be developed. The competitors you mention (UMC, FRS, BRM) presently meet none of these criteria as their projects are too far from port to use road haulage. Nor is there sufficient port capacity for their rather ambitious forecast production. All 3 have indicated that their projects require new rail and port infrastructure at cost +$ 1 billion and construction at least 4 years away. Giralia is focussing its attention on 2 projects close enough to port to contemplate early development (Mt Webber, and Yerecoin) with access to existing open rail (Yerecoin) or road haulage (Mt Webber). Talking about mining is different to mining. Giralia will release results from its Scoping studies and inform the market of any plans to develop its assets only when we have the resource, the infrastructure and the ability to fund our proposed mine(s).
regards Mike Joyce
GIR Price at posting:
84.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held