the time has come

This announcement today is disastrous!!

Hamish has missed every single target he has set, he has wasted all the money that was meant to be spent on the coking coal assets on buying poor quality loss making thermal coal and has been running a very bloated head office.

Now just when shareholders should be getting the benefits of the very long wait for the regulatory approvals for the main coking coal assets we get told that the ramp up of the coking coal assets is on hold so we can focus on the rubbish thermal coal, the likely loss making Cascade assets and maybe a very small Escarpment mine at some point in the future.

I believe the real story is:

- the offtake agreements have fallen over (they were only MOUs, not contracts) therefore no funding from these agreements
- the banks won't lend to a loss making coal project
- shareholders are done giving BRL more capital

And Hamish has run out of money!!

BRL has some great assets, but management have been absolutely hopeless.

BRL should:

- stop all production at the loss making thermal coal assets
- change CEO immediately
- aggressively cut the head office
- focus solely on Escarpment and permitting the rest of the Buller project
- accelerate building the wash plant/conveyor and ramping up the coking coal production at Escarpment and Buller generally (the ROM coal currently in reserves is not hard coking coal - the ash is way too high and the CSN is far too low - whereas the washed product is high quality HCC)

Clearly funding will be needed, but at least with this strategy it might have a chance at raising funding.

Also, every mine in the world has managed to cut costs, whereas BRL is sticking to their cash costs. I believe this is because their cash costs were wrong and are still wrong. Time will tell.

Anyway you cut it, the time has well and truly come for a change in management.