administrators........................, page-14

No the ads were not from GLN.

The number of beds at the Fortnum camp is in an ASX ann from when the decision to mine was made.

At a faded memory guess it was less than 100.

This from the WA paper.




Prospective buyers are already circling junior miner Gleneagle Gold, which called in administrators yesterday after joining a long line of gold producers whose deposits have fallen short of expectations.

Administrator Simon Read, of PPB, said he fielded three approaches in the hours following his appointment and remained optimistic the Tony Brennan-chaired company could be restructured.

Gleneagle is understood to have debts of about $12 million with the major secured creditor, Westpac, owed less than $5 million.

The company, run by former resource analyst Ian Prentice, has struggled with grade and production problems since it restarted mining at the one million-ounce Fortnum gold project in July.

Just two months after it raised $6.6 million from European investors, Gleneagle suspended trading on April 27 while it negotiated with an unidentified overseas-controlled, Australian-listed gold producer about an alliance which would have included a capital raising. The talks collapsed on Monday, forcing directors to call in administrators.

Despite gold trading at near-record levels of more than $800 an ounce, Gleneagle has laboured to get the Fortnum production plant operating efficiently and grades up to expectations. Its March quarter report revealed negative operating cash flow of $1.56 million.

Gleneagle is the latest in a long list of Australian miners, including Sons of Gwalia, Tanami Gold, Bendigo Gold, Giants Reef and Deep Yellow, to run into trouble when gold believed to be in the ground could not be converted into profitable production ounces.

Mr Read said investigations were now under way to determine whether the problems at Fortnum, north-east of Meekatharra, resulted from resource miscalculations or issues with mining, treatment and processing.

He said Gleneagle had valuable assets including more than 2500sqkm of ground taking in the entire Peak Hill gold field, and an operating one million tonnes-a-year processing plant.

“We’ve had phone calls already and so I’m pretty confident that the voluntary administration can help them get through this process,” Mr Read said. “I reckon by Monday I will have 20 (approaches).

“The problem for us will be sorting out the tyre kickers from the genuine parties but I have no doubt we will have a lot of people interested. If there is a market to be realising these types of assets, then this is the market.”

Mr Brennan, a veteran gold miner and corporate promoter who has been with Gleneagle since it floated almost four years ago, said he had quit his other public company directorships, including Red Fork Energy and Tomahawk Energy, to concentrate on resurrecting Gleneagle.

“We did the drilling, we got an independent resource calculation, we did a bankable feasibility study and the bank’s experts looked over it and despite all of that when it came time to mine there was substantially less gold in the ground than estimated,” he said.

He said a report had been commissioned to look at the project’s resource, mining practice and grade control and the results should be known in 14 days.

Mr Brennan said the company had the support of its secured creditors to work through a restructuring.
MICHAEL WEIR