Pinned straw:
12-August-2025: MoM Podcast: Booms, Busts & Billion-Dollar Builds (Zimi Meka) (Ausenco)
Zimi is the founder of Ausenco which was ASX-listed but was taken private in 2016. They are a serious competitor of Lycopodium (LYL) because they love working in the world's more dangerous locations. Zimi even mentioned that he was recently asked to look at a project in Western Pakistan (Reko Diq) which he said they would be willing to take on with the appropriate controls - that's one that LYL recently passed on after doing all of the feasibility studies and FEED work.
Very interesting interview.
Ausenco continues to operate as a private global consulting, engineering, and project delivery company after its delisting from the Australian Stock Exchange in 2016 and subsequent sale to U.S. investment firms in September 2023. The company was acquired by Resource Capital Fund VI (RCF) in 2016, taking it private, and was then sold by RCF to a consortium of Eldridge, Brightstar Capital Partners, and Claure Group in 2023.
They are not listed on any stock exchange now, but they are a competitor of Lycopodium.
Worth noting however that Ausenco's specialty is copper, while Lycopodium's is gold, however they both work on a variety of minerals and metals processing plants including base and precious metals.
Disc: Holding LYL.
15/8/2025: I mentioned Barrick's Reko Diq copper/gold project in Western Pakistan in that straw about LYL's competitor Ausenco a few days ago. In their MoM podcast today, Trav, JD & Sam Berridge from Perennial Natural Resources Trust added some more colour to what's been going on over there lately:
43:59 Barrick's Pursuit of Reko Diq Debt
A few takeaways:
- Stage 1 Capex is apparently US$6.6 Billion and Barrick want to put in about US$1.5 billion, with Pakistan matching that, and the remaining US$3.5 to $3.6 Billion being debt funded, but they could be having a spot of trouble raising that money for a project that is apparently less than 50 Km from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and has its own internal issues there in Ballochistan as well;
- Barrick have apparently written down around US$1 billion due to losing their gold mines in Mali after refusing to negotiate any further with the Military leaders of that west African country;
- As part of various attempts to raise the necessary project finance, up to 20% of the Reko Diq project had being offered to Saudi Arabia's Manara Minerals, however the Saudis' state mining fund could not ultimately reach an agreement with Barrick and the Pakistani Government, so those talks have now ceased apparently;
- Barrick are trying to progress Reko Diq in an environment in which they are diversifying away from almost purely gold mining into copper growth projects and there has been activist moves in the US to possibly try to force a break-up of Barrick into two companies, gold and copper, or to spin the copper growth assets out into a separate company, an idea that is gaining traction and support due to Barrick's recent and ongoing questionable capital allocation decisions; and
- There seems to be both reasonable doubt that Barrick can raise the remaining required minimum additional US$3.5 billion in non-recourse or low-recourse development bank financing that they're after for Reko Diq, and that the project can be built on time and within budget - as well as questions concerning whether it can be operated safely once built - because of its location.
There was a time - last year - when I was looking forward to Lycopodium announcing they had won the EPM contract for Reko Diq, because it was going to be the largest contract in their history, by a decent margin, but now I'm SUPER-happy that Peter De Leo and his team made the decision to withdraw from the bidding process for Reko Diq. And possibly from a second project with Barrick - we know there were two projects they walked away from - I just don't know what that second project was - but I know that LYL were involved in studies with at least one additional gold project with Barrick and that may have been an expansion of the gold mine(s) in Mali that Barrick have recently lost control of.
Looking forward to LYL reporting on Wednesday (20th August 2025).
Disc: Holding LYL (largest position in real life, by a good margin). Not Barrick.