RE: Interview with LCC's president and CEO Strang's "... more or less big enough now ..." doesn't cut it.
If a viable mining operation could be placed on Lumina's current claims he would be right. But the fact is that the a viable mining operation cannot be built on the current claims.
Either Strang knows it and he's pretending that the problem does not exist, as he should, it or he doesn't know which is much worse. The only way that Lumina's claims can be mined is if the claims are extended to the north-west.
It's a Catch 22 situation. If Lumina wants to sell its current claims it has to JV, like it or not.
Few of you want to hear this. Most of you will be striking a "Monkey Hear" pose. Take those palms off your ears and listen. Lumina has to JV with Salta/Cascadero it is not an option it is mandatory if they genuinely want to sell those Lumina claims. And yes they do.
Obviously, Lumina cannot admit to this because it is definitely against their interests (at least till a JV is announced). I bet that they don't admit it even after the JV is announced because it will no longer be a problem after the JV is announced.
What is even more bizarre is that the JV is in the best interests of Lumina. What I'm hearing from Taca Taca is that the planned JV involves only two adjacent claims (with a possibility for a third). That's only just enough to get them out of their current predicament. They could have used the opportunity to go really big. But either they are playing it cautious or they fear that the return on JVing on more than two claims is not the best bang for their buck (as is noted in the interview Strang does not believe it is worth adding more claims because it doesn't give the same rate of return).
What they haven't figured on is that their caution is unfounded. Existing exploration results show that those two claims to the west have superior quality deposits.