JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – London Aim-listed coal-mine developer Beacon Hill Resources, which is in default on interest payments, was placed into administration on Tuesday.

Owing to its “significant liabilities”, shareholders of the company are not expected to receive any proceeds from the administration process, which will be carried out under joint administrators Graham Bushby and Phillip Sykes of Baker Tilly Restructuring and Recovery, London.

The Centurion-headquartered company and developer of the opencast Minas Moatize coking coal mine in Mozambique’s Tete province has been unable to secure viable funding following its failure to obtain the required 75% shareholder support for a remedial plan that it put forward at a general meeting on December 17 last year.

Beacon Hill chairperson Justin Farr-Jones said that in light of the urgent requirement for additional working capital, and default of interest payments due to certain holders of the group's outstanding convertible loan notes, the only course of action for the board was to place the company and its wholly owned subsidiary BHR Mining Limited into administration.

At this stage, however, the company's principal wholly owned operating subsidiary in Mozambique, Minas Moatize Limitada, was being kept out of the administration process to allow Beacon Hill, its administrators and its senior debt facility provider, Vitol Coal SA, to keep the Minas Moatize mine as a going concern and identify potential acquirers.

"Minas Moatize remains an excellent project with significant milestones achieved and we sincerely hope that a suitable acquirer will be found to enable this attractive asset to recommence economic mining operations over the longer term," Farr-Jones added.

The company announced the resignation of Strand Hanson as its nominated adviser and broker and said that if an alternative nominated adviser was not appointed within a month, the trading of the company’s ordinary shares on the Aim would be cancelled.