Booms, Busts & Billion-Dollar Builds (Zimi Meka)

We’re thrilled to bring you a candid conversation with ZimiMeka — co-founder and CEO of Ausenco, one of the world’s top mining engineering firms.

From the soaring highs to unbearable lows, Zimi sharesstories of building mines in explosive-laden corners of Laos, hacking through Tanzanian & Zambian jungles, and navigating the temptations of debt and public markets.

Packed with timeless business lessons, investor insights,and a few cracking tales, we thoroughly enjoyed this is a masterclass.

This interview was recorded on 8 August 2025.

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TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) Introduction to the Guest and His Achievements
(02:04) The Commodity Supercycle and Ausenco’s Growth
(08:03) Founding Ausenco and Early Challenges
(12:25) Key Projects and Breakthroughs
(16:38) Navigating Difficult Projects and Locations
(21:13) Ausenco's History and Learnings
(31:56) The Impact of Market Downturns
(32:31) Strategic Shifts in Business Operations
(33:17) Challenges in Project Feasibility and Execution
(34:56) Cost-Effective Project Delivery
(38:17) Balance Sheet Reflections
(39:32) Navigating Financial Challenges and Private Equity Deals
(46:45) Technological Innovations in Mining
(47:52) The Essence of Engineering
(51:30) Overrated or Underrated

 

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You go from rooster to feather dusted pretty quickly in the in
the equities area. But the only people who wanted
to talk to us, we're we're shortseller hedge funds, you know,
yeah, I always say to people, you get broke in the.
Big. Jobs you don't know you're going
broke. Mate, what a guest you lined up.
What a conversation we got to have with Zinni Meka, who is the

(00:24):
chief executive officer and founder of engineering firm with
a big name Asenco. I I this, this was this was just
a wicked combo wealth of experience, 40 years of
experience in design, construction, operation of
minerals, processing plants and a Senko mate.
He founded it when there was obviously no one.
And now it's a giant global organization with 4000 people

(00:45):
and they've built so many plantsfrom that.
We had just this wonderful conversation with Jimmy.
Yeah, he he shared a story on a podcast he did about five years
ago that that we listened to andit was gripping, it was
engaging. It was building a mine in the
far-flung, you know, corners of the, the world.
And he's done that more than onetime.
You know, some of the mines his company has built or worked on

(01:06):
QB 2, Las Bambas, La Muana, Fruta del Norte, Carapatine,
Acadia, the the list just goes on and on.
And it's people like this that have that wealth of experience
that I think need to need to share it, right.
And he's been to the very highs and and lows of Aussie business
and it was so candid in in presenting that all with us.
So I'm thrilled to share this conversation.

(01:27):
It's it's inside about building Asenko, obviously, but also just
inside about. Yeah, like what what should
investors be looking out for or aware of through that lens of of
an engineering firm like Asenko building in all parts of the
world? We, you know, we got into the
geopolitical climate of different countries and, of
course, concluded with a fan favorite.
Overrated, underrated. Yeah.

(01:47):
Can't can't wait to bring this to the audience mate. 100% no
doubt listening to this episode will make you a a better
investor and and more thoughtfulabout the mining industry and
and what it takes to get projects done.
And just a super enjoyable conversation as well, eh?
Let's go to Zimi. Let's do it, Zimi Mecca, thanks
a bunch for taking the time and catching up with us.
We are, we're thrilled to talk to you and we, we want to start

(02:08):
this conversation casting our minds back to the, the 2000's,
the mid 2000's, the commodity super cycle, the China bull run.
Osenko goes public in in 2006 and, and it goes on a hell of a
run. What was it sort of like being
in the industry, being one of the biggest names in the
engineering part of the businessin in that era?

(02:28):
It's a little, actually, it's a little surreal.
You had to sort of sit back and go, is this really the mining
industry? Because, you know, for a long,
long time, it'd been pretty steady and lean.
I mean, copper had stayed at 50-60 cents a pound for 10-15
years that I'd been in the industry.
And all of a sudden it's $1.50 and, and climbing and the, and

(02:49):
the Chinese are investing and things are happening.
And so given that we'd had such a dry run for such a long time,
it was a little surreal. And you, you know, the, I guess
the, the press was saying it's going to last 20 or 30 years.
And so everyone got wrapped up in that and, you know, we grew,
we grew. We so when we listed we were two

(03:09):
or 300 people and by 2000 and sort of 10, we were, I don't
know, 4 1/2 thousand something like that globally.
And that was just too much for us.
You know, it was just happening too quickly and, you know, hard
to keep up. And their stock went from a
dollar at flight to I think it peaked at, you know, just under

(03:30):
18 dollars, 1760 or something. And yeah, it was hard to sort of
control, you know, it started tosort of feel the culture
starting to suffer a little bit because you got all these new
people. And you know when it hit hard
that the other way it hit reallyhard, you know when everything
came off. Yeah.

(03:50):
And and along that sort of massive growth journey, you do a
few acquisitions as well pre 2008.
Yeah. We'd in total we've done about
14 or 15 acquisitions and then we listed to get capital so we
could grow through acquisition, right.
So that's that was the main reason for the listing.
It wasn't an exit strategy or anything like that, may have
been for some of our shareholders, but certainly not

(04:11):
for me. And so oh wait, we, we did three
really, really key acquisitions.We spent about 250 Australian
$1,000,000. That's the decent amount of
money. And we picked up a big present
presence in the Americas, North America, South America, you
know, Chile, Peru, Brazil and Canada.
And the US We had all of a sudden 1500 people opened up the

(04:34):
service offering different client base.
And you know that that was a bigthing for us.
I mean, we're still living off it today, to be honest with you.
These jurisdictions are, yeah, astaple of it, you know, the the
locations and jurisdictions thatare Senko services to this day.
But kind of just going back again to that, that 2008, the
Senko stock peaks 16 yeah, 1660 odds like you say. 17 bucks or

(04:59):
something? It must have been both like
absolute like a crazy elation given the 20X from in a short
period of time, but then also a a, a, a pretty emotional kind of
thing. It's not the the entire
industry, not just the Senko share price, you know, falls
amid the the crash, but like balancing the the financial like

(05:20):
weight of all of that would havebeen tumultuous.
It, it was, it was Travis, you know, we were trading in a 54
PE. You know that's sustainable.
For money services. That's tech, tech stuff, right?
And, and yeah, yeah. And you try and control best as
you could manage, I guess betterword than the market and the

(05:42):
analysts and such. We're not, we, we just can't
grow at those sort of levels. But they were all wrapped up.
Everyone was just wrapped up in the euphoria.
So, you know, we're sitting witha market cap of, I don't know,
1.71 point 8 billion. And and I'm thinking we've got
to raise money when we can at these sort of levels because I
just thought it's just not sustainable.
But no one wanted to listen, eh,Back then, though, no one wanted

(06:04):
to listen. They all had this.
Yeah. We're on a rocket ride.
When you think about the the growth strategy at that point in
time, if you look back it, is ita, am I right in thinking it's a
more Aussie and Asia focused business and you're turning the
dial because there are bigger CapEx projects, there's bigger
work to be done in the Americas and from that point on it grows

(06:25):
to a business that does like 85%of its revenue in the Americas.
Is that right? That's right.
So what what happened strategically was it was pretty
obvious that you couldn't make along term growth agenda out of
Australia and, and Asia and to adegree Africa, you know, it's a
bit hit and miss, you know, depending on what country's got
things happening in Africa, you know, what governments are

(06:47):
doing, etcetera. And Australia is very cyclical,
very competitive. So it was really obvious that we
had to be in the Americas. We are strong in copper.
And if you're not in Chile, Peruin, in the copper and you're not
in the copper industry, you know, and I've been going there
for 10 years to try and sell business and no one, no one was
listening. But we've done this great

(07:09):
project called the Moana in Zambia.
You should see it's amazing. It's not in Chile.
We're not interested. So how do we, how do we get to
Chile? You have to be here and you
know, you can send one or two guys and build up over time, but
you'll be there 5 generations. So we had to, to go all out with
some really good acquisitions toget a strategic presence and to

(07:31):
get us that technical capability.
So that's the, that was the strategic focus.
And you know, for, for example, you know, in Chile we're 1800
people now almost 2000. We're the largest service
provider in Chile and it came off all the back of those
acquisitions. We wouldn't have been able to do
it any other way. And that allowed us to grow and

(07:55):
allowed us to go through the hard times, but better than
probably most. But we, we were very focused,
Australia, Asia, very. I'm fascinated to to take us
back even further and and hear the inkling because you from
what I understand, started this business when you were were 31
years old and before that. Am I right in thinking you're

(08:15):
done five years at Mount Isa? Yeah, I started my career at
Mount Isa Mines at the copper refinery in Townsville.
So yeah, you know, bit topical at the moment is your career.
Going to end at the same time asthe refinery.
It's a look, it's, it was world leading technology, right.
So it's a it was a great spot to, to, to work as a graduate.

(08:38):
And then I, I went to work for aPerth based company called
Mining and process Engineering Services and they call Min Proc
Engineers that that was started here in WA and I worked in the,
the Brisbane office of that essentially, you know, building
gold plants in WA and Queensland.
And then, as you say, Jonas 31. I thought, I always felt I

(09:02):
needed to have my own business or have a crack at least.
And, and when you're 31, you're done.
You don't, you don't know much can go wrong.
You sort of feel yourself bulletproof.
So off we went in the worst recession in the history of
Australia. Gold price, I think at that
stage was probably less than 200bucks an ounce.
Capital was hard to raise. So the first ten years a pretty

(09:24):
big slog. The recession we had to have.
That was the one, Yeah. I was going to say it, but.
Yeah. So I mean, I want to understand
what why you kind of did had youhad you run a, you know, full
scope engineering project to build a mine on your own at that
point in time? When I was at Min Proc, I did
you. So I was the engineering manager
at Min Proc in Brisbane and I'd worked on a variety of different

(09:46):
projects from go to way. So I had a project delivery
background, engineering background, but I hadn't really
run a business, you know, I hadn't been AP and L owner or,
you know, an operations kind of person.
So that was a fair bit of learning in all of that, you
know, and, and sort of, you know, managing cash and doing

(10:07):
all those sorts of things. As they say, happiness is a
positive cash flow. And so, yeah, that, you know, it
was just a matter of trying to build a client base and I tell a
story. I sitting in this office in
Toowong, which is just a, you know, suburb, 4 or 5K from the
city of centre of Brisbane. And the first couple of days,

(10:30):
you know, sitting there in an office, empty desk phone feeling
pretty. And what do I do now and bring
get all excited, pick it up. And it was, you know, my wife
saying, hey, can you bring some bread home when you come home
sort of thing. Yeah, I thought, I thought it
might have been more than that. Anyway, it was, it was, it was

(10:52):
pretty, it was pretty fun. It was, you know, fun in a weird
sort of a way. But like I said, you, you know,
the, the experience I, I had in project delivery at, at min proc
really set me up well to, to do that.
But I wasn't set up to run a business and to be a leader, you
know, I had to sort of evolve and learn and all that sort of

(11:13):
stuff. And and you started the business
with a business partner? Yeah, Bob Thorpe, he was my boss
at Mintrop. And yeah, we we went out
together. And and for how long was it that
sort of Co founder dynamic between between.
You, Bob and myself. Yeah, Bob, Bob retired off the
Asynco board about a year ago and he came off the, you know,

(11:37):
being a full time executive probably 1520 years ago.
Yeah, well before the flight. Yeah.
And, and through that period in the in the 90s, early 2000s,
you're just running the businesstogether.
Would you focus on different types of?
Things and yeah, Bob would sort of, he was really good at, you
know, making sure the invoices went out and people paid their
bills and I was, you know, out driving the engineering, doing

(12:02):
business development, you know, winning new business.
So we had a pretty good kind of delineation, didn't overlap
much. And you know, we never had a
blue. We got on pretty well still to
this day. So I can't, a lot of people
can't say that, you know? Yes, it's fantastic.
You're you're a new kind of company and you're trying to win
work. You've got you know, you can you

(12:23):
can speak to capability. I've done this for a different
outlet, But how does, like was there one, one job that I
suppose you you won and delivering that gave you and and
the brand of Senko like I suppose it gave it a brand.
Do you remember? Do you remember?
That job, yeah, no, totally. And that's a really good
question, Travis, because you know you're going out and all

(12:44):
you're selling is yourself and afew people, not this track
record. And I say to our business
development guys today, you guysgot it easy.
You got so, so much you can selland history and you know it's
it's a lot different. But there was, there was a
couple of, there was a couple ofthings that happened.
One of them was the Chattery gold mine in Thailand was a very

(13:07):
big turning point for us. You know, we were, we won it.
It's a very difficult thing to one why there was 9 bidders.
You don't. Want to be bidding on?
Those ones, no. Today we would say we're not
bidding, right? And, and Macquarie were funding
it. And so they were big decision

(13:29):
maker because Macquarie funding at 100% debt, no equity.
It was such a good project. I'd never seen that before in my
life, right? And so there's this guy in
Macquarie called David Woodhouse, lived in Sydney,
right guy, he was a geologist. He was leading the push and 9
bidders, Macquarie sitting therefunding 100%.

(13:51):
So you think about it, they're not going to, they're going to
risk their, their, their lot with people that don't know.
So I flew down Sydney, got to know David.
We got on really well. We had put in a good bid first
job we're doing offshore and that's that's a big deal.
And we, we, we, we were awarded the project and and David rings

(14:13):
me and he says I've invited you to my wedding.
And I said, yeah, I know we're looking forward to be there
tomorrow. He said I need a best man.
I said, what do you mean day before your wedding and you
haven't got a best man? He goes no, but he said, can you
be my best man? I said, well, I guess so.
He said that's what he got, whatI got to do.
He said just sit next to me and and he was getting married to an

(14:36):
Indonesian. They said there's a lot of, you
know, ceremony, but from going from not, no one knewest and
best man. David Woodhouse's wedding was
quite, quite surreal. So we we did chattery and
started up well. Produced at $53 an ounce.

(14:56):
All in cost. I mean who does that right?
53 bucks an ounce, 250 gold price.
It's a big plant too, right? Like.
We expanded it four or five times, you know, it started its
life as a couple of million tonne a year.
And and then from that, you know, Owen Hegarty gave a Sep on
because as he said, it's only upthe road, you know, in the Namco

(15:17):
Valley, no big deal, unexploded ordinances, you know, 4 meters
of rainfall a year, but very just a suburb, you know.
So we did that. And at the same time a a, a
really good guy called Jeff Stewart.
Jeff has unfortunately passed now, but he founded N Flinders

(15:38):
gold mines and that's now the Cali granites that that Normandy
owned. Sorry, Newmont.
Normandy did own it, but now Newmont.
So Jeff, Jeff developed the first one there, which was the
Granites and I was the commissioning engineer mint prop
at at the Granites. So I got to know Jeff.

(15:58):
Anyway, they found the N Mara Mara gold mine in Tanzania,
which is now owned by Barrick. So he said, hey, do you want to
do you want to build my project in Tanzania?
And this would have been about 98, 2002, 1001.
So we went along and, and you know, we, we, we did the job.
It's a great job. We expanded it and I think it

(16:21):
was a one or 2 million oz was 10million oz.
They've extracted out of it. But those two or three projects
then just set us up and each oneof them there was a
serendipitous connection. You know it.
It just wasn't a straightforwardwalk up start.
But there's an appetite like immediately from the beginnings

(16:41):
there to to take on a desire to do things in an exotic
locations, right, Yes, you, you weren't shying away from that.
No. Why?
Well, I, I guess you know that mining tends to be in remote
locations, but, and we don't shyaway from that.

(17:01):
We kind of like the challenge tobe honest with you and the our
people like doing it, you know, like delivering an outcome in a
difficult environment. And the competition's a lot less
as well. You know, there aren't a lot of
companies that want to do that, whereas for us it's stock in
trade. You know, if, if I'm not

(17:22):
comfortable to go myself to a location, we don't we don't go,
you know. So you know, we've done some
difficult Congo, we've done a, you know, consevering Congo,
Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania. And you know that in South
America we've, we've done 2 projects at 4500 meters above

(17:43):
sea level, you know, the Instantia and now Zafranel.
And these are all to have challenging, you know,
executions to them. But that's what we do.
That's that's our lot. Hearing all those names, all
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But they know as as good as anyone out there that to be at

(18:06):
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(18:28):
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(18:49):
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(19:10):
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back to. Probably not, not we, no, we go

(19:30):
back to pretty much all of the ones that we we've gotten
involved with. Probably, you know, recently we
were asked to do something in Western Pakistan.
Yeah, with, with a lot of controls.
We're comfortable there, wouldn't go into Afghanistan and
some of those countries. But generally speaking, you
know, where we don't, We've had pretty good experiences wherever

(19:53):
we've been. How do you, how do you think
about the alignment that comes with, you know, these, these
contracts winning work building,building a, a plant or you're
delivering, delivering on that engineering front because.
That kind of happens. It's construction, it's defined
period of time, defined scope often and then, and then you,
you're, you're gone. So like, how do you have

(20:14):
alignment for the longevity of of outcomes when you're, when
you're, when you, when you're coming into, you know, the
initial process? It it depends with it's a junior
or mid tier or major. I mean, it's very interesting.
You know, juniors 1 mine operation, but eventually with
good management teams, they, they end up being multi mine and
becoming a mid tier. So you look beyond that initial

(20:37):
contract, you know, you, you seethe development pipeline and,
and the people behind it have, have the driving capability and
enthusiasm to build a company. And so you, you align yourself
with that. But I mean, if we start from the
feasibility study, early stage feasibility study, that
relationship can be 6-7 years, you know, then the last two

(20:58):
being the construction component.
And, you know, we're doing environmental panel landing and
permitting. And, you know, mine, mine
studies it. It's, yeah, it's a long, it's a
long, long relation and a long gestation.
Yeah. And how how competitive is the
the engineering part of the business now?
Are there were there more players back then to compete

(21:18):
with than there are now? Or how's that kind of?
Evolved, I think, I think offshore it's probably less and
here there's more, you know, especially in in Wawa is
probably the most competitive spot in the whole world when it
comes to engineering. Now offshore, you know, the
bigger companies have probably shield away from it.
You know, everyone didn't want to do mining 10 years ago when,

(21:41):
you know, things came off and they exited from the Super cycle
and they haven't come back. Some of the larger companies.
Creates A margin opportunity. For us, yeah, we're, we're,
we're, you know, our, our competitive base in in South
America in particular is, is quite small.
You know, three players, four players Max on the larger big

(22:01):
copper projects. And, and we've got a pretty good
track record on copper. So, you know, we we generally
get get in and around the hoop and you know, have A at least on
a bid list final two and we've won quite a lot of copper
business. I'd I'd love to hear a couple
more details about the the Sep on contract that you you
mentioned winning that going to a a part of the world that gets

(22:22):
4 metres of rain with unexploded.
Land mines, Yeah. Gee, I'll tell you what.
It was interesting. Have you?
You haven't. You guys haven't spoken now on
Hegarty at all, have you? We actually did have a chat with
him about a year ago. Yeah, so.
You know the sort of individual I'm talking about.
Yes, yes. Just glass is half full and it's
probably more than half full. It's probably overflowing,
right? He was the one I thought you

(22:43):
were hinting at with commodity prices.
What did he say? Higher forever was, that was.
That his Yeah, a longer long. Longer and higher.
Forever. Something like that.
Yeah. So you know that that project
been around for a while. It's Rio's.
It was Rio's project. And it had a oxide copper cap
and, you know, Chuck, acidic secondary copper sitting

(23:07):
underneath it. And no one had built a project
in Laos before on the mining side.
And, you know, he said, look, rings me up.
He said, look, you got to you got to come and have a look at
this scrap project you just finished in Thailand.
And I was a bit wary, I must admit.
And normally I'm car charge. Let's go.

(23:30):
And I said, look, I'll come up with one of my guys and we'll
have a look. We'll see what we reckon.
So First things first, we fly into Thailand, we go up to the
border on the Mekong River. Again, you got to catch a catch
a ferry across the Mekong. Mekong like flows like pretty,
pretty tense and it's quite wide.

(23:52):
And you get to outside, you got a whole heap of steps to climb
to get through Savannah kit to do the customs clearance.
And I'm sitting on this ferry, which was a rectangular steel
tub, really with a whole bunch of people on it.
And people had gone into Thailand to buy land suites and

(24:13):
dining room suites. And they're all on the roof.
They fall off and they're floating down the river.
And, you know, we're on the ferry, we're chasing these
things to try and get them back on for these these people who
were just just on on a, on a shopping trip.
And we drive to site and it's 42kilometers up the Ho Chi Minh
Trump. So the Ho Chi Minh Trail was the

(24:34):
most bombed, bombed piece of land during the Vietnam War,
about four and a half million tons of explosives and 30%
didn't go off. So we're on this, we're on this
trail, 80 Creek crossings, the jungle's kind of over us.
And that 42 kilometers takes us 7 or 8 hours.

(24:55):
So we get to site after that journey and all of a sudden it
starts raining and I'm talking, you know, golf balls of water
just bucketing down. No one comes out and he goes
well, So what do you think boys?Piece of you know what, right.
OK, yeah, OK, So I turned him up, my guy Roxy.

(25:18):
I said, well, what do you think?He said, ah, let's have a crack.
So, so we started and clearing the unexploded ordinances you
had to get specialists in because you know, there's sort
of £500 a 1000 LB bombs. And inside the bombs is these
little tennis balls filled with ball bearings that, you know,

(25:40):
there's stuff everywhere. And so we, we got these
specialist guys, they'd find them, they'd blow them up, clear
the land and then we'd dig right.
And and then we had to upgrade the road, which was a big deal.
I sent I sent one of one of my best earthworks guys up there.
And I remember going up for a visit once and there were a

(26:01):
couple of trucks on the side because they'd slipped in the
mud during the rain. And he comes out of his office
and he said, what have I ever done to you to deserve coming up
here? I said, you want to come home?
He goes, no, he said, I'm not going to let it beat me, right.
And we, we buried bulldozers, diggers in water and creeks, you

(26:24):
know, flash flooding, you know, the whole bit.
And so we, we built the, the, the gold project first that did
that in a year, which was quite amazing really.
I'm surprised we managed to do that.
And then we went straight into this amazing copper project
using novel technology as a acidic pressure oxidation leach

(26:46):
producing 80,000 tonne of metal a year.
It was just a real work of art for where it was.
You know, we had to bring in pressure, pressure oxidation
vessels. We had to upgrade bridges.
Logistically a real big deal. And you know, all through it,
you know, Owen, Owen just was sopositive.
You know, his company went to 7 billion market cap from 20

(27:08):
million and you know, everyone'shappy and and we still got an
amazing relationship with him. We've probably done four or five
projects for him since then. But it that was a that
logistically that was that was probably one of the most more
challenging ones we've done, I think.
And then we followed on did poo Cam for Pan Aust straight
afterwards, which was another copper project there a couple
$100 million worth. So yeah.

(27:31):
In in terms of the sort of new experience, the the learning,
the sort of newness about the whole thing, are there other
builds that compare with that one at all?
I think the the one lumwana in Zambia be be there.
Love to hear more about about that one.
Lumwana was Equinox, it's Craig Williams.

(27:53):
Interesting. When we started that project had
a market cap of a hundred, 150 million and they ended up
selling the company to Barrack for about 7 billion.
It's quite incredible that was that was the largest concentrate
ever built in Africa. What was the initial throughput?
25,000,000 tonne a year. And now, now Barracks talking

(28:17):
about doubling that to 50. Correct.
Yeah, exactly. And we, we, we had an
interesting close to that project because they were on a
tight time frame with massive liquidated damages.
This is it was a fixed price project and we had a had a rat
eat a wire in substation controlpanel and the the the

(28:44):
transformer caught on fire. Destroyed it with a week to go
to commissioning. I've read about the insurance
damages that that came up for AFR articles, but I've no idea
if this is where it came. From I did, yeah.
So you have to downgrade earnings I think on.
We downgraded earnings. Then we were, you know, two or
three months late. We copped a big swag of

(29:06):
liquidated damages, which couldn't recover from anybody.
Yeah, wow. But you did a fixed price
contract for 25,000,000 tonne per annum?
A copper project, yeah, it's a total contract value is 310 US.
That's a, that's a, that's a big, big quantum to to deliver
with certainty at a fixed price.Correct.
Yeah. And we did, we still may still

(29:28):
did OK out of it even with with that ending.
Yeah. But yeah, it was quite a
horrible end to it could have been a fantastic outcome.
It was just a good outcome. How do you think about risk like
especially when it comes to to contracts?
I mean, there's, you know, histories is is littered with

(29:49):
contractors of all shapes and sizes, which which come on
undone by, you know, a thinly, athin margin, large fixed, fixed
price contract and then inflation or something comes
that's unforeseeable. Yeah, it's, it's all around
people getting the right people and doing the work upfront.
And you know, the, the thing that that we have I guess is a

(30:12):
fairly big database of information.
You know, if you want a 25,000,000 tonne of copper
project, probably now got three or four of them that we can pull
out and use the quantities to estimate it up and those sorts
of things. So you know, you just, you just
got to break it down and break the risk down and get the right
people around it. We, we've, we've modified our

(30:34):
approach to it. It's not, you know, some of
these countries labor laws are difficult, practices are
difficult. So we, we've tended to be very
selective around it and because you can blow the place up if
you're not careful, you know, when we were smaller, you could
control it better. Now we're sort of 4000 people.

(30:56):
You got to. It's pretty hard to control that
on a daily basis where when you're a smaller organization,
you tend to have more oversight over those styles of contracts.
Have you ever felt that there there was a particular contract
that that might have got you a bit too close along the way?
Not really, no. No, we've, we've always done

(31:16):
what we thought we were going todo when we thought it'd end up.
But, you know, we've never had anything that's, you know, taken
us, you know, to the point of collapse or anything like that.
No, nothing at all. But, you know, if you look back
at those years that when revenues fell off, that was
because there was no revenue to have, you know, between 12 and

(31:40):
16, the industry came off so much that no one was not.
You couldn't. You couldn't get contracts, you
couldn't get revenue, you couldn't get studies, you
couldn't get anything, you know?So that's the other side of the
the China cycle, that's the. That's the bad side of the coin,
yeah. Yeah.
And does does that just feel like it goes on for?
Yeah, never. Exactly I you know, if you

(32:02):
remember Rio then brought in Chinese shareholding that did
raise Janalko comes in Anglo's balance sheet was just about
shot. Their share price went down to,
you know, 3 to 5, whatever it was, I.
Had to sell the farm. I had to sell the farm.
Yep. So, you know, they're clamping
up, They're not spending capital, they're not doing

(32:23):
feasibility, so it's not doing anything.
And, you know, the service providers are in, you know, in a
horrible spot. And that that's when we sort of
thought you kind of got to get some sustainable earnings and
variety of earnings. And that's why we bought an
environmental consulting business, grew our consulting
practices, you know, not just the project delivery side, the

(32:45):
project delivery side's now probably only 25% of our
business, you know, 30% of our business rather than a big
dominant part is there. Everyone's always doing studies,
you know, sort of doing environmental, especially
environmental stuff. You can't do a drill hole unless
you permit the drill hole. So, so that's why we changed our

(33:06):
total revenue mix from 2016. The, the, the project delivery
piece, while it's a diminishing part of the total revenue, I do
still find it so interesting, right?
Because the, the, is there ever a project you delivered in, in
the process of like, you know, building the plant or executing,

(33:26):
you kind of realised that maybe the geology wasn't too crash hot
that all of this is based on, but you finished the job, turn
the mine on. Mine doesn't work, but it's not
the plant's fault. It was the geology.
If you had that experience and could you see the signs as it's
coming together? I've observed that experience.
Yeah, there was a a project in northern NSW called Mount
Carrington. This guy's back 30 years, right?

(33:47):
And we did 7 feasibility studieson it, and every feasibility
study showed the same answer. There were it wasn't worth
doing, but they elected to buildit and finance it.
It's done by another company, not us.
And it shut down after six months because it wasn't
economic. There was no goal there,

(34:08):
fundamentally. But the contractor got paid
upfront. Yeah, yeah, all of that.
So I've seen it once, maybe twice, but we've never, you
know, we've seen companies overestimate grade in the 1st 6
or 12 months and do poor grade controls, which has resulted in,

(34:31):
you know, early capital raises to cover off low cash flow.
I've seen that several times, stuff that we've built where,
you know, the geology is complexand the mining needed to be very
selective and they just didn't get on it early enough.
That can be very, you know, doing a dilutive rise in the 1st

(34:52):
12 months, 18 months can really impact.
I've seen that a lot. There's, there's another topic
I'd love to, to sort of hear your thoughts on because the
perennial challenge and, and desire as well for a mining
company is to, to build the plant and build the whole thing
cheaper. And I've, I've heard you speak
about this to an extent. I think you were talking about

(35:12):
an example in Peru where you were able to build for 1.3 and
it other others had priced up a similar style thing for for 2
billion. Yeah.
What does that actually look like without cutting corners,
making a project that does the job?
Yeah, I think it there's a wholelist of things, but that's, I
think you're referring to Constantia, yeah, which is owned

(35:35):
by HUD Bay and that's Constantiais 85,000 tonne a day.
So they talk tonne a day over there.
And so, yeah, what's that, 30,000,000?
Close the wires of an Australian.
Just don't. Tell me per hour.
Yeah, that's right. And so a lot of it stems from

(35:59):
the initial quantities of of steel, concrete, piping, cable,
etcetera. A lot of bad designs are around
a compact footprint. So we bring things you know,
very tight, very small and as a result you save significantly on
commodity. So that's one thing.
If you have less commodity, you know, you save on, on

(36:23):
construction costs and and then the others around schedule, we
tend to deliver things to a minimum schedule with, you know,
the long lead items being, you know, the long lead delivery
items being the critical path. And we, you know, we work off
that. Be sure on the schedule you save
money and being selective about the flow sheet, you know, how we

(36:46):
actually process what, you know,what equipment we use and all
good quality equipment, but how it's arranged.
And that, that if you're smart enough that that can save you
lots of money, not putting contingency on top of
contingency, you know, using, you know, low cost construction

(37:08):
fabrication centers around the world.
Sometimes it's cheaper to fabricate in Asia.
Sometimes it's cheaper to fabricate in South America.
Hunting all that down and you know you eventually get a good
saving. Yeah, the comment you make your
bad. Yeah, the materials being a huge
component of this of course likethat.

(37:28):
I suppose that might be a shortfall of, of a, of a, you
know, typical cost plus model inin some ways there's like a the
how does, how, how does the, youknow, the engineering company
who's been outsourced maybe maybe have the incentive all of
the time with the cost plus model to minimize footprint
other than just winning the workin the first place.
Yeah, obviously reputation's a key part of it.

(37:51):
So for us, that's a key part of it.
But you know, you try and roll in in financial incentives into
it, financial penalties as well.Yeah.
So you got some skin in the game?
Yeah. So you you get a an incentive if
if the material cost comes in like lose.
Some budget or save the contingency.
That makes sense. Yeah.
You look at it many different ways and you you don't want to

(38:12):
get a reputation for being over budget all the time.
You know God. No.
How do you think about growing the the margin of a business
like this? Like I understand you, you break
out on your own. You want to just, you know,
you're excited to, to get started and create a new
business on your own and then you think about improving the
business once you bed down thosefirst contracts that we we spoke

(38:33):
about and you, you build that reputation.
You don't have to compete as as much on margin.
Where I guess in along that journey, do you, do you start
thinking about it or is it just growing the scale, growing the
jurisdictions, that type of thing, growing your offerings?
I think obviously top line growing revenue, but I'm I like
growing margin, but not at the expense of being competitive.

(38:56):
It's more around technology, youknow, using, using technology
to, to, to deliver outcomes, youknow, can save you a lot of
money and make more margin and reduce overhead.
So in a business like this, you're just so conscious of
overhead, continually watching the overhead and you're looking
at ways to incorporate AI or, you know, whatever it is to to

(39:21):
try and, you know, save time, save money and make more margin.
So a lot of people focus on top line revenue, but there's no
point in doing that if the margins are off, you know?
So in the I, I would imagine in the depths of that sort of
downturn 2016 RCF comes in and and and you do a deal.

(39:42):
Can you, can you talk us throughthat, that whole?
Process yeah so RCF were shareholders when we were
private the first time and during the public years they
exited they exited at the float and then about 6-12 months later
they exited their total holding and they you know we weren't no

(40:05):
one was loving us at that point you know they you go from here
here I to what's the rooster to feather dust it pretty quickly
in the in the equities area and the only people who wanted to
talk to us we're we're short seller hedge funds you know so.
I talk to you. I love talking to us.

(40:26):
You know, there was a queue of them, but I think we were
heavily shorted top two or threethere at 1 stage when things
started to come off. But yeah, James, just the
managing partner, founder of thefund, he just said, look, if you
ever want to go private, you know, we'd be interested.

(40:48):
So I bought the debt. We had some debt.
That was the, that was the horrible part here.
It was the first time in the history of the company we had
some debt. I'd always been companies in the
service area shouldn't have debt, not a lot, maximum 20%
gearing, that sort of thing. And you know, we'd just done

(41:09):
these acquisitions. The Astoria should have raised
more money, didn't have ACFO or accountant come and tell you
about ratios and can do this anddo that and we don't have to
dilute and raising money at 13 or 14 bucks.
I'll take that every day of the week.
But anyway, so so you know, let's get a bit of debt, get

(41:31):
some debt, then you all of a sudden dealing with covenants
and you know, we're in a cyclical business.
And so, you know, they weren't going to, they weren't going to,
this was 2015. They weren't going to, you know,
renew the debt 12 months out. So we had to do something about
it. So James came in, bought the

(41:51):
debt and made an offer to publicshareholders and scheme of
arrangement and we took the company private.
And that debt had been in the business since the.
Since we had our way. Oh yeah, since the financial
crisis was that debt used as well as the the funds from from
the. Phrase.
To make those acquisitions. And raise some more.

(42:14):
And raise some more along the way.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Do you, do you, do you think differently about balance sheet
and debt as a result of that experience?
100%, yeah. What?
What are the lessons for for? Yeah.
I, I, I mean stress testing balance sheet, you know, on the
downside, I think, you know, I have, I, I have a very, very

(42:36):
strong view around that. And it's all great when things
are humming along, but when things turn like they do in our,
our, our industry, just understanding what those trigger
points are. And so, you know, we have
minimal debt and that might takeit up to a point.
Like I said, 2025% gearing, no more.

(42:58):
And you know, just continually watching cash flows like you
know, back then I think our DSO days were they were out to
probably 125 30. Now we operate, you know 5055 S
big focus on cash flow, working capital, complete learnings that

(43:19):
we take away. Would you, would you sort of
guide any anyone in that sort ofcyclical type similar business?
I know you've mentioned the 20% top gearing for that.
That is sort of enduring lesson through.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, or try not to have it.
I mean, businesses like ours, it's working capital, you know,

(43:41):
that's the that's the thing thatyou've got to fund and you just
manage your working capital and try and have your money in your
bank account rather than someoneelse's.
And if you're going to do acquisitions, you know, get in
there and you know, pay them offas quickly as possible.
If you're going to take a bit ofdebt and you know, in, in equity

(44:01):
markets, you know, you've then got a balance of dividend,
right? And, and same time when you're
when you're a people business and you're in a downturn, you're
exiting people. So there's redundancy payments
going out, you know, so there's cash going everywhere and you
need to need to be thinking about that.
It's, it's tricky. It's the animal spirits are at

(44:23):
work in the good times and they you don't always think about the
downside, right? Yeah, I always say to people,
you go broke in the good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you don't know you're going.
No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, It's a great
reflection. In 2023, RCF then sell the
business to another private equity group.
We didn't. We didn't actually close that.
It's still pending but we didn'tclose it after the DD.

(44:46):
That's Eldridge Capital. OK.
We didn't, we didn't get an agreement on, on final terms
and, and they've come in as a financier of our balance sheet.
So they're still involved but ina, in a different capacity.
But it's, you know, it's still out there and RCF closed in fund

(45:07):
it it, you know, they would be keen over the, you know, next
couple of years to see an exit because they can only stay so
long. Do you like not doing the the
calls and all the the road showsas leading a a listed company?
No more short seller hedge fundsto.
You know it, I got back 30% of my time, Janice, so, you know, I

(45:30):
could spend on the business and clients, which is what I like
doing. Something else I'm involved
with. I've just watched what someone
has taken 100 meetings in the last six weeks on a, on a public
company situation. I mean that that's, that's
intense, you know, yeah. So no, I, I don't, I don't miss

(45:52):
that part of it at all. It it because, you know,
sometimes you take a meeting andno one buys stock for three
years or doesn't buy stock at all, you know, whereas I think I
like, you know, in what I'm doing, achieving outcomes, you
know, you're talking to people and things are happening, but

(46:17):
I'm not, you know, it was good for us right at the time.
It was really good for us, some of it.
How do you think about the sort of the world of commodities,
everything happening kind of going going forward from from
where we are now like here on the on the one hand, minds of
the future, more going underground styles are changing

(46:38):
autonomy, all these sorts of things like opportunity and
excitement, potential disruptorscoming in.
Yeah, I think, I think, and we think about the mind of the
future a lot. And yeah, underground obviously,
you know, keeping as much as youcan away from public eye.
Yeah. But you know, I think, I think

(46:59):
technology is just the exciting bit.
You know, you, you look at in the processing area, you know,
of course particle flotation where you can, you can grind
A200 Micron and float off product.
You know, in, in the, in the, inthe rougher part of the course,
particle flight part of the circuit.
You know, you can take a, a plant now doing, you know, 30

(47:20):
million tonne a year at a 75 Micron grind course in the grind
of 200 Micron, push more tons through not very much capital
and, and achieve the same, you know, basic recovery and
performance. That's super exciting stuff and
that's where I see the advances in the in coming in mining and
things like that in AI utilization process performance

(47:43):
improvements, etcetera that that's where it's going to come
from I reckon. And autonomy, obviously, right?
What is engineering to you, Jimmy?
Me engineering is doing something for a dollar that
takes the person on the street $10 to do, being innovative to

(48:04):
be able to come up with solutions that are either time
or cost advantageous or add value along the way.
That's how I look at engineering.
That's been a Cinco's value proposition since we started.
Our purpose is to find a better way and we live it.

(48:25):
And that's what I live that, youknow, to find a better way.
And that's how I see engineers to take up those challenges and
and run with them. I find this fascinating.
I find this so fascinating coming into the, the industry
from a finance background, don'thave that, that skill set at
all, but on, on two different fronts, the processing where
you're, you're skilled in me andthe, the actual mining.

(48:47):
And you think like, what is the difference between a good miner
and a bad miner? How much cheaper could a plant
be built, you know, or how much more expensive could it be
built? And the margins are enormous is
I think what I've learned along the way, like how do you sort of
think about like a bad engineering firm and, and a good
engineering firm and, and what that can kind of cost a mining

(49:09):
business and an investor? Yeah, I think there's a couple
of things if you like, if you'rethis focus on the junior end may
just don't have to raise money. So it's, you know, junior has to
scrap for every cent, right. It's debt equity and they have
a, they have a finite amount of money.

(49:31):
Like they raise their money and that's it.
And if someone comes along and says, I'm really sorry, but I'm,
you know, 30% over budget here, they have to scrap to find it,
then generally speaking, they'regoing to dilute everyone at low
equity, right? Because their price has done
this, because everyone knows what's happening.
And that's not going to make a lot of shareholders happy.

(49:53):
The dead guys are going to get nervous.
They're probably going to eitherput a little bit more in there
to prop it up. And all of a sudden the MPV
changes, the, the, the cash flows change, everything
changes. And I think that's the
difference between good one and a bad one.
You know, be able to be conscious of the fact that
there's a finite amount of moneyhere and it's hard to get mid

(50:17):
tiers are probably lesser of a problem with that because they
have got cash generating assets.But you know, you can destroy
MPV in the first six months of amining operation if you're not
careful. So what it means to me is is is
just being super focused on the outcome, on what your parameters

(50:39):
are and work within it. Was it, was it always going to
be an engineering firm for you? Yeah.
Nothing else sort of took the took the fancy.
Mate, I can't spell so wouldn't be a good lawyer and those Excel
spreadsheets, they bamboos or me.
So yeah, no, it's just always going to be an engineer and.

(50:59):
And do you think the entrepreneurship side of it was
just innate or sort of nurtured through the family?
It came through my dad. I think, you know, dad's dad's
family entrepreneurs where they came from in Europe, they're
always trading, you know? Yeah, yeah.
So yeah, that's always going to eat.

(51:21):
From a young age, it always usedto say you got to own your own
business. So you hear that every day of
your life. You're.
Yeah. Yeah, the the one segment we
kind of often do in our in our interviews and these interviews
a bit different, but overrated, underrated, right.
And we haven't prepared this, sowe're kind of just going to do
it on the fly. But in a succinct number of

(51:44):
words, you've got to justify if something is overrated or, or or
underrated, like a one sentence kind of response as as opposed
to, yeah, a, a, a big long response.
We should be succinct anyway. You you reckon we can we can
whip up some topics on the fly mate.
I know we can edit it to make itsound.
Good, so it. Doesn't matter all.

(52:05):
Right. Hello.
OK, let's let's give it a go. Yep, it'll in in in life in
general? Or is it related?
To the mine industry in. The topics we'll compose like.
OK, engineering in the industry.OK, the Philippines.
Overrated. Do you want to know why?
Yeah. Yeah.
Geologically amazing, but so hard.

(52:28):
Heavily populated. You've got the church, you know,
really embedded in local community permitting.
You know, I've been in and out of there for 30 years and I
think it's just too hard, unfortunately.
I think it's an amazing geological setting.
In South America, Ecuador specifically.

(52:51):
Is there one in the middle whereyou kind of like instead of
like? Neutrally rated.
Neutrally rated. Neutrally rated.
Watch. Watch this space, I reckon.
Yeah, OK. Yeah.
Yeah, it's definitely attractinga lot of.
I think it's right now. Yeah, yeah.
You know, and, and you know, we,we worked on Fruta del Norte,
which is Lundin's gold operationthere.

(53:11):
So we, you know that that's beenvery successful.
But you know, the Casco Bell's abit.
This one is a bit slow, but still great geological setting.
But I think it's one to watch. Rare earth processing.

(53:33):
At the moment. Oh that, that's a hard 1.
You know what? I've never been a rare earths
fan. You're allowed to say it.
I'm not. I'm allowed to say it, right?
I'll tell you why. I mean, it's really interesting.
Do do you guys know Nick Curtis?Yeah.
Yeah. Do you know?

(53:54):
You know who Nick is, right? Yeah, at Linus, right.
So Nick comes into the office inBrisbane.
It would have been 9098, I reckon 99, somewhere like that.
And he comes in and he says Zoom, you know, raising, raising
some money for Linus, and it's going to be rare earths and

(54:15):
Mount Weldon. Oh God, heck, rare earths.
He can fill this glass up with the amount of rare earths
that'll be, mate. It's never going to go anywhere.
Well, look at that. Yeah, we.
But it's taken a long time, right?
It's taken 30 years. What a journey that's been.
Yeah, what a journey. So from a, from a just looking

(54:37):
at it, they're not as rare as weall feel, right?
That's one thing. But I think if it wasn't for
that geopolitical twist, it maybe be a different dialogue
we're having around it at the moment, right?
Because you know, the whole processing technology piece is
really, you know, sitting in China, Chinese done a great job

(55:00):
of, you know, setting up a mineral strategy 40 years ago
and just working through it. All right.
And, and now it's, you know, youhave to have it to do, you know,
smartphones and this that and the other.
And you know, you guys know as well as I do.
So, you know, I think, I think Ithink it's time is in the sun.

(55:21):
But you know, it's a tough, it'sa really tough commodity to
extract and refine. It's not straightforward, doable
and all the rest of it, a lot ofthat no house sits with Linus
and the Chinese. So it's pretty hard to get
through all of that. But all again, all possible.

(55:43):
So I'm sitting like 30 years agoit was that.
Now it's yeah, it's kind of might be real.
In a nutshell. I thought you're going to tell
me lithium. I thought about it but.
Lithium, the floor is yours. Lithium demand not going to go

(56:03):
away. So you know what are we up
million tonne a year at the moment globally, 80,000 tonne
five years ago, so. That's a tremendous growth rate.
Incredible, right. So if you look at the next few
years and maybe 4 to 5 million tonne, it's got to come from
somewhere and it'll come from the lowest cost producers.
So where I think where I think the shift is going to be is

(56:27):
progressively over the next three to five years, technically
Hard Rock lithium's going to going to suffer a little bit.
You know, you your, your brines,which are dependent on solar
drying at the moment, which is very, very difficult to control.
There's a whole raft of technical issues around that.
But with the advent of DLE, you know, and we're doing quite a

(56:49):
number of DLE projects in the Americas, early phase studies,
pilot plants, that sort of thing.
And there's that technology is going to develop.
And so you're going to see, you're going to see a whole
bunch of brine lithiums at low grade, you know, be economic and
be down the lower end of the cost curve.
What that I think is going to dois impact obviously the hard

(57:11):
rocks in WA which are good grade, not great recovery, you
know, producing a 6% concentrate, which you then ship
around the world. You know, it's, it's, it's
trying to compete then with what's happening with the
brines. And then if you introduce brines
coming out of oil wells, you know, people like Exxon,

(57:34):
Chevron, etcetera, Saudis with Aramco, now they've got 400 PPM,
you know, coming out of there, out of their wells and they got
a lot of money to do development.
So I, I think we're going to seea real change there over the
next three to five in what's going to be the preferred
extraction because it's not rarecommodity.

(57:56):
I don't think demand's going away, it's just how we get it.
Pressure oxidation. Yeah, of what?
Overrated or underrated? Yeah, I think a bit overrated.
I'll tell. I'll tell you why.
I mean, you know when when you when you put something in a

(58:19):
pressure oxidation, there's so everything goes in a solution,
every, everything. And you then got to treat this
the the whole bunch of streams. It's expensive and all that sort
of stuff. Good old fashioned smelting.
Just burn everything when you, oh, roasted, burn it all.

(58:45):
Did I really say that? I mean, you're an engineer, you
think in terms of costs, you know, for an outcome, you're not
going to ask about Biox or, or, or the Albion process.
Yeah, I think and we, we built aBiox in China, Jingfeng.
So I know gold worked well there.

(59:05):
Yeah, they're always going to bearound the edges, I reckon.
Yeah, yeah. Bespoke application to a
solution. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gold companies wanting to be a copper company.
Yeah, I think it makes good sense.
Yeah, really good sense. And, you know, generally

(59:26):
speaking, if you look at a lot of ore bodies, you know,
sulfides, there's always a combo.
You know, you'll have a copper mine with a gold stream, you'll
have a gold mine with a copper stream, which is a bit of a pain
in that scenario. But yeah, I think that that kind
of works for me. And I'm going to flip the
segment a little bit and ask youwhat the most underrated

(59:47):
jurisdiction is right now from amining investment perspective
that is? Yeah, maybe off the radar of
some. Yeah, and most underrated.
Yeah, I, I, I, I think Peru, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think

(01:00:08):
people, people kind of give it abit of a bad reps 15, almost 15%
of the world's copper. It's a phenomenal deposit there.
It's a great job. Great minds, yeah.
Doesn't always get a good Rep. Doesn't and we've got about 7 or
800 people in Lima. We can operate there really
well. I actually like the place a lot.

(01:00:28):
You know, they have these presidents come in who are kind
of, you know, going to shut mining down and do this and do
that. They never do it.
You know it. Means so much to the economy
there. Yeah, exactly.
And and so, you know, people come in and out and, but it, it
just functions, you know, and the people are good, well
skilled. The quality of the engineers.
Yeah, very good. Yeah, Yeah, really good.

(01:00:49):
And and they've got a good attitude.
You know, they kind of like the party and have a, you know, have
a good time. It's it's a good place.
Yeah. Good mix.
How about the the the old sort of stands to to Group A few
countries together. We Kazakhstan's OK, We've done a

(01:01:10):
lot of stuff. Kazakhstan, I think Azerbaijan,
it's not a stand, but it's close.
I think it's got one letter missing on the end there, isn't
it? So Uzbekistan, yeah, OK, that'd
probably be my Kazakhstan in Uzbekistan.
Be my 2 picks, I think. I think the Balkans is an area

(01:01:31):
that's, you know, a little underrated as well.
You know, I know Rio's had issues with the Aidar in in
Serbia, but you know, Adriatic did that project in Bosnia and
you know, Macedonia, there's good geology in there.
Turkey. Yeah, they've all got rich

(01:01:53):
mining histories as well. For a long time, yeah, they
have. Exactly.
Exactly. I know you've probably got a
vested interest in in the answerto this, but the like mining
companies that do all the engineering in house overrated
or underrated? I'm not going to answer.

(01:02:20):
Timmy, this has been fantastic. We've learnt a bunch from you.
Really appreciate you making thetime and and sharing your your
history and your your journey with us.
No worries. Great to be here.
Thank you very, very much. Thanks so much for sharing your
insights. No problem.
Phenomenal conversation mate, I'm going to listen back to that
one again. Thoroughly enjoyed that one mate
and a massive thank you to our fantastic partners.
First and foremost Sandvik Ground support who we had in the

(01:02:42):
show. More than mesh and bolts access
mineral services, more than crushing and screening cross
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for a retail price. Now remember, I'm an idiot.
JD is an idiot. If you thought any of this was
anything other than entertainment, you're an idiot

(01:03:04):
and you need to read out a disclaimer.