News

July 16, 2008

This Year Hambledon Mining Got Interesting For All The Wrong Reasons, But Hopefully Things Will Calm Down Again Soon

By Rob Davies

All new companies need a bit of luck when they start up. If you don’t get that, then at least you hope to avoid bad luck. Unfortunately, Hambledon Mining suffered the misfortune of an accident relating to a boiler in the process plant shortly after it began operations in early February, resulting in the death of an employee. That lead to operations at the site being suspended for a month, while mining itself only restarted in May.

Losing six weeks of production in the early days of commissioning has a pretty painful impact on cash flow and resulted in the company coming back to the market in May to top up working capital through a £2.8 million equity issue. Raising more equity at the same time as suffering a loss of production had predictable effects on the share price, pushing it down from 20p to 7p. At that level the company is capitalised at £35 million, and on the future production profile, there’s certainly plenty...