They’re probably guilty of being overly optimistic and not putting enough cash aside for contingencies. They probably didn’t know about or expect the ground problems at A1 when they did the tailings dam upgrade.
Likewise the continuing problems with Maldon grades would have taken time to identify, then even after they thought they’d resolved them by moving to the western structure, finding that it was also partly diluted to eastern zone mining - a lot of that sort of stuff is part and parcel of the complexity of restarting an existing mine and the complexity of orebodies.
These things happening at overlapping times with sorting out the shot creting etc at A1 has swung them well off track.
All seem reasonable explanations. I’d also think they may have expected to roll the notes over for another year. They could have lost the lot to the note holders. Gandel has stepped in and prevented that. They’ve managed to keep core staff and suppliers on board without a total reset.
Given the problems they’ve faced there’s actually a lot they’ve done right.
Now luck just needs to swing back the other way - find more than expected at victory north. Get better than expected grades at Maldon and things can go completely the other way.
