mux announcement, page-5

The Chillagoe area is where they have already spent most on exploration & development. A good part of 25 mill just last year. All of the Northern region inventory was increased to over 10 million tonnes from just 2 mining fronts, which equates to about 10-12 years of ore feed for the Mungana plant. Mungana alone has had 130 million spent on it to date. Thus you wouldn't need to spend FCF on exploration and development as the priority would be to get 2-3 sites into production to replace Mungana zinc production in 2-3 years time. King Vol being one site that has significantly higher grades at depth. I think 60-80 mill would go much further on developing one region as opposed to 100-150 on 4-5 regions, which is how they were positioned back in 2009. If they finish the Mungana plant and get costs down to 60c and zinc rises to 90-$1, they would start to generate a bit of cash again but the key will be to finish this plant and for MUX and KZL to better leverage each other strengths in the Mungana area e.g. equipment wise, other resources, development costs etc, whilst significantly reducing admin and overheads.

The upside of course is that KZL's surrounding tenements in North Queensland have been largely under-explored from a resource definition perspective. Some could be fobbed off for additional cash and some retained.

Anyway it's pure speculation as to what the assets are worth and what they plan to do. It's all in the hands of the admins. But I think a few miners will be in trouble soon if prices don't rise and the Chinese don't pull out the cheque book. Anyone that wants funds from Aussie banks can forget it.