Replies to post #47740 on Sarissa Resources Inc (SRSR)

[JPGetty]

There may be political ramifications involved, too, as South America can be somewhat "troublesome" at times.

Canada may be a more "friendly" partner.

Just another consideration.

[mariner78]

Shipping - this is not a significant issue for the company....

I would be very surprised if the company shipped anything other than finished product (i.e., some powdered form of processed niobium). Keep in mind that if you ship unprocessed or semi-processed ore, you are basically shipping a lot of dirt and only a little bit of what the buyer actually wants (the purified niobium).

I would be surprised if this was shipped in anything other than container sized lots. In fact, the production could probably be sent out by airfreight, once a week.

Even if you figure that we extract 9 million pounds of niobium over the life of the mine, and figure the life of the mine is 30 years, that's only 300,000 pounds (or about 136 metric tons - metric ton contains 2204.6 lbs). Typical marine containers are 20 ton capacity, so 6 or 7 shipments per year would be all that's required. When you ship on containers, you can get "door to door" service, and in fact the shipping company might even use "mini land bridge" service, whereby they rail it to a port that suits them - in this case, maybe overland to Vancouver (for instance).

Someone who is more familiar with the operation of mining, processing and shipment of this material can correct me, but I don't believe that shipping operations are going to amount to anything of significance for SRSR or their potential markets, even if they are in China or SE Asia.

Also, I didn't check, but did Leigh use sea miles or air miles for his calculations. Air miles are valid if they are shipping by air, but then again, the cost differential (relative to the value of the product) and shipment time become unimportant. How much less time does it take an airplane to get from Brazil to China versus Toronto (or Montreal) to China? Hours at the most. Even in the case of sea travel, the differential is not very big, maybe a few days at the most.

I would be VERY surprised if this was shipped as bulk ore. I'm 99.9% certain that it would be processed on site. A good example is iron ore. Most of it is moved as a processed, pelletized form, about 70% iron content. That is after it has been refined after being dug up. Why pay ocean freight to move dirt?

Given the much higher value of what we are selling (at $24/lb, it's over $50K/ton), it will probably go in container or partial container loads (if they want to make shipments and payments more frequent), and the distance it's shipped won't make much difference.

Sorry to go on about this, but this area is my specialty and I felt compelled to comment.

M78