Some Points For Discussion

I'd like to point out a few things that I see as potential issues with Cradle and Panda Hill, devil's advocate kind of thing. While I'm holding, I think it's important to also look at the case against Cradle, please bear that in mind:

1) The market simply doesn't seem to buy the story. At this stage, I'd expect a bit of buzz and movement with the SP, but so far, it's just not happening. Now the market doesn't always get it right, but this does make me cautious, as I've sometimes got a bloody nose trying to be smarter than everybody else. The counterpoint is that if and when offtake agreements and finance were announced, the market would have to believe the story, and I'd expect this to go ballistic.

2) Offtake agreements: as you all well know, any new niobium supplier needs to break into a well-entrenched market where existing suppliers have long-term contracts with steel makers. I suspect the established players will not happily surrender market share to the new kid on the block and may instead try to undercut repeatedly, which could be one of the reasons for the long time it took (and still takes) for Cradle to get a foot in the door.

3) Panda Hill's glory, if it ever gets to production, may be short-lived. The Tomtor deposit in Russia, one of the world's largest RE and niobium deposits, may soon be developed. mining-atlas.com has the deposit as containing 154 Mt of ore at a whopping 6.71% Nb, plus a few rare earth metals, so the Nb could almost be a by-product. If this is correct, it would mean the deposit contains some 10Mt Nb2O5, i.e. more than ten times the Nb contained in Panda Hill, and at more than ten times the grade. While I think the restricted niobium market can easily absorb a minnow like Panda Hill, Tomtor would be a very different animal and would certainly put pressure on prices and shake the whole market up. For now, I'd treat the Tomtor figures and news re development with a grain of salt, though.

Some food for thought, thought I'd bounce this off you guys here, happy to hear your comments.