African Minerals - Re: AMI Stream Log - For AML to be successful...

For AML to be successful they needed to be a 50 million tonne per year operation and to make an impact on the majors a 100 million tonne per year operation. The rail at AML is supposed to be 25 m but in reality it will struggle to consistently ship 20 as it is too narrow a gauge with too few passing points. On top of this there are numerous problems with the communities along the rail route that often lead to disruptions to the rail continuity. The metallurgy was never done properly and the plant that was constructed was a copy of a Chinese plant hence all the problems with the ore and the de sliming issues. The DSO was never and will never be DSO as it requires significant treatment. It is still unknown if the plant can even treat the main ore body as the metallurgical work was never completed on the two different types of ore the constitute the bulk of the ore body. While iron ore was above 150 a tonne none of this mattered as they would have had time to work it all out as they went along but with the collapse of the price they found themselves caught with no way out. In mining you have to be either small and cost effective or large and gain the significant benefits of quantity of scale. AML is neither of these with high overheads because of the size and location and neither the grade or tonnes to allow for survival during inevitable price fluctuations.