Actually that exactly justifies the comments on coal quality.
Nobody here said (that I saw) that this coal was worthless or wouldn't find a market - just that it's of poor quality and won't get $120/t.
Chris has confirmed that. When he refers to 'peers' he is not referring to Hunnu's high-quality projects but their Unst Khudag project, and Peabody's adjacent project (which somebody said has been stopped? Anyone confirm?)
These are all projects of similarly low-quality coal which suffer a huge discount to the benchmark thermal coal prices. They are all drilling in a poor quality area, so they are all finding the same stuff. Look at all those air-dried values in the quarterly - 3995 kcal, 4916, 4002... they are all a long, long way from the Newcastle benchmark which is 6800 kcal air-dried.
You didn't ask him to compare this coal with Queensland coals, so he didn't. He compared them with what is nextdoor which is, of course, similar stuff.
Will there be a viable project? Probably. As he said, $14/t shipping, $10-20 mining = $24 to $34 opex costs. If they can get $35-40/t for it they will be making a similar or better margin to CCC or other domestic coal producers - just without the export coal that CCC has. And no doubt there is a LOT of coal here given those seam intersections. More than 100Mt for sure.
But the people using the Qdaf figure as a basis for coal quality comparisons are, frankly, wrong, and Chris's e-mail has confirmed that by pointing to the comparison table in the quarterly and saying TVN's coal is of comparable quality. This coal is D-grade thermal coal that will get domestic prices. Which is all the so-called 'downrampers' were ever saying.
Excellent that the CEO replied so quickly and comprehensively though. Wish I'd get a reply like that from the guys I e-mailed the other day.
TVN Price at posting:
5.9¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
