25 Kettl Alfred October 7, 2012 at 7:06 am There are several factors, besides REE grades wich making a Rare Earth E producer interesting: …..location (Stans is not in a favour able location from political pov …..location can also mean cheaper labour, easier to get permits …..what is the end product. Stans is Producer of metals, not just concentrates …..process. Stans has 0ver 10 years proven production..with now new state of the art advanced process …..production. Stans did produce even metals during past 3-4 month (in small scale but notable purity) …..commercial production…maybe just month away from 500 t/y production as first phase …..investment. Less than 250 million for the new plant, besides the existing one which was refurbished with absolutely lowest budget. So, is Stans still a Junior Miner? Jack…….to be ignorant here is not the smartest thing. Of course I am pro- Stans as a investor, but truth is truth and will ever be. Yes, 8 month ago, the picture was different, at that time I would not have even dared to write such post, because I couldn’t, simply because I didn’t have enough facts, just faith in this investment. Now, the cards have changed and Stans WITH STILL A PINKSHEET SP BECAME “IN MY EYES” A MATURE PLAYER AND EVEN A FUTURE NOTABLE PRODUCER OF HEAVY RARE EARTH METALS. I don’t want bash a bout producing salts, concentrates, good drill results of mining opportunities, no. However, it is fair enough to ask you to mention Stans in your reports, otherwise they a just fragments, incomplete ” research” and of minor quality. If you writing about one company or two, that’s ok. Making a chart like in above article, then I rather not even want to read it. In this spirit….I don’t expect your reply, but I guess many others will get some reasonable doubt here.
Jack Lifton October 7, 2012 at 9:58 am Mr Kettl,
I am not a supporter of globalization, so that I advise my end-user clients to base their sourcing decisions on the adherence to Western norms and regional ethics of proposed sources. Western democracies practicing free market capitalism have historically restricted trade only as a last resort short of war. The old Soviet Union never missed a shipment to my customers of rare earths for phosphors in the late 1970′s because it, The Soviet Union, needed hard currency. China came into the US market at that time and undercut Soviet pricing thus driving the Soviets out of the free market. China’s goal was, of course, also hard currency. Western businessmen gambled and have now lost the bet that the Chinese would always need them for currency and markets.
Today’s post Soviet(?) Russian Federation is hardly a free market democracy, and it has become a large exporter of natural resources and energy. The Russian people’s suffer but the ruling oligarchs do not. They live sybaritic lives and invest nothing in infrastructure or nation building. The rule of law hardly competes there with the law of the jungle.
I cannot in good conscience recommend as a rare earth supplier any company that is not in a free trade based economy. This is why we must break our dependence on China. Substituting Kyrgyz political overlordship of a supplier for Chinese does not seem sensible to me.
We must either build a reliable, credible, total supply chain under the control only of the free market or we will remain dependent on China’s whims and China’s political and economic goals. The Russian dominated part of the world is not to me an acceptable answer.
I know you won’t like this answer, but it is my answer.I also know that Kyrgyzstan is not part of the Russian Federation.
Jack Lifton |