RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Old article - Mentions Aggrega Golpet, good point but acquiring a company is not as simple as you make it sound.
If one buys the Panama operation of PTQ they buy the all thing that is assets and liabilities. Assets include people (800 of them), and liabilities include the environmental issues that can come up if you shut down a plant among other things.
FQM has a lot on their plate right now and one of their big push is to limit the number of people they have at the CP mine (per CC). They don't want to have another mine to manage. IF PTQ was much bigger it would be a different question but PTQ is a rounding error for them. In addition FQM has several bond issues to resolve and adding $200M to the balance sheet is not in their plans.
Concerning the aggregate. Here is an interesting scenario:
FQM right now needs the aggregate and a lot of it. Per the FQM conference call they want to limit the amount of sticky clay they move so they cannot get to their own aggregate and to limit the clay movement you need more aggregate to consolidate the facilities (chicken and the eggs as the CEO of FQM describes it). The obvious supplier is PDI.
3 years from now it will be a much different environment. With the mine pit FQM will be a net producer of aggregate and they will have a friendly construction company (PDI) next door. Since FQM is a mining company and has no intention of becoming a construction company I can see PDI being a buyer of aggregate from FQM for construction projects in Panama.
All of that will be a lot clearer in about 3 months.
Cheers and thanks for the interesting question.