I followed a mineral exploration project for about a decade, that had initially appeared could turn into a good opportunity for the mining finance business I was in at the time - a wonderful new mineral deposit discovery had been made, and it looked like a new mine was in the offing.
Manganese prices were good, the project would require a meaty amount of capital and plenty of expensive new infrastructure, so I kept in touch with key people, both in SA and Australia, and then began to follow what became an extremely murky legal case through the courts - sadly, all the way to Constitutional Court. Six years it took for Aquila Resources to beat off their tax-payer funded legal opponents and win their mining right.
By this stage I had followed the project for so long, and got to know the back story so well, I wrote it up for MiningMX.
What it serves to illustrate is that in capital sales to the mining industry, the sales cycle can be extraordinarily long, and that you better have plenty of prospects in your sales funnel because even "dripping roast" projects may never get off the ground for completely unpredictable reasons.
Read my article here - Aquila, PAMDC imbroglio a perfect demonstration that DMR needs dramatic overhaul
And a more recent article on the fate of the project - which hopefully may still get built - All steam ahead on $200m Gravenhage manganese project as Aquila finally wins mining licence
Commentaires