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I just can't figure out what plan NIU have for CRTM. I don't know why, but I just have a strong suspicion that it doesn't involve the hard work of trying to get a mine up and running in an unproven location such a Molulu (and it is still totally unproven, 5 years on, and after all the cash raised).

I note the suspension today, so even with all these appointments of experienced board members, no-one remembered to do the annual accounts again.

We really shouldn’t all be having to guess how long commissioning a jig plant takes.

Why couldn’t they just say that at a rough estimate it’ll be 6 weeks, or 12 weeks, or 5 months or whatever ? They have a really bad habit of leaving things open ended with no timeline.

We’ve taken on a lot of debt to pay for this, and we should have some idea of when the payback starts.

Very poor communication from the company.

It's made worse by the situation changing every other day with it being played out in the courts.

On Friday the High Court issued a ruling blocking any mining activity at Goantagab, but yesterday Timoteus Mashuna (one of the mining claim owners) filed an appeal against that ruling, which according to The Namibian newspaper, sets aside that ruling until the Supreme Court rules on the appeal - so that appears to mean any mining activity can continue.

They never seem to get these shareholding updates quite right do they ?

Perhaps if we all had more real news to focus on we wouldn't be looking at this so closely :-)

@Anthony Viljoen - hint hint.........

And of course, Michael Rawlinson wouldn't be counted in Directors and Employees anymore anyway - so again, not confirmation he has sold, just that he isn't a Director or Employee.

@TD2 - The shareholding increases for Orange Trust and Naminco just reflect the interest payment on the July 2023 Loan Notes, which was paid in shares - see RNS 15th August. So unfortunately not a sign of imminent news (I really wish it was).

Orange Trust hold 40 of the 77 Loan Notes, so they got 16.6m shares as the interest payment, and Naminco hold 27 of them, so they got 11.3m.

The shares in issue increased by just under 32m on 20th August due to this interest payment. That is most likely the reason the Directors and Employees holding is now below 3%, as it was only a fraction of a percent above 3% beforehand. I'm not saying Michael Rawlinson hasn't sold his shares - we don't know - but he doesn't have had to in order for Directors and Employees to drop below 3%.

Big news this morning - Namibian High Court gives approval for Goantagab mining :

https://www.observer24.com.na/high-court-gives-goantagab-green-light-to-mine/

@WindintheWillows - That's fantastic that you managed to sell at the 18 month high after seeing a bounce from a 5 year low. Your timing is incredible, very few people possess the skill to get it exactly right like that. Well done.

I do fear you may be overreaching though. Having completed a placing in late June, and having already finished building a new plant that essentially just needs to turned on and will raise output by a minimum of 60%, and with tin prices very stable near to $35k, the chances of Andrada needing a raise this year are as close to zero as it's possible to get.

@TD2 - they did a lot of test work with Metso and TOMRA on the crushing and ore-sorting. Also in March 2024 they said the following in an RNS, so they were clearly believing it would work. At that time, the ore-sorting was the only game in town to expand production and bring down the Orion royalty.

"The Company is implementing a production expansion project at the existing tin processing plant to 2 600 tpa (or 1 600 tpa of tin metal) in line with the Orion tin royalty requirements. The production expansion will be facilitated through the installation of a pre-concentration circuit that incorporates ore-sorters.

The net effect of the ore-sorters is expected to be an increase of approximately 50% in the tin content to the wet processing plant. The CI2 will augment the pre-concentration circuit, enabling plant production to reach the targeted run-rate by April 2025. Commissioning of the pre-concentration circuit is planned for the first quarter of 2025. This expansion is anticipated to increase revenue by up to 75% and to reduce the AISC."

I'm not going to pretend I'm happy with the ore-sorter situation, given they were announced with great fanfare about 18 months ago now , but to be fair to Andrada, the presentation for the raise in June did clearly show on slide 13 that the ore-sorters wouldn't contribute to output until Financial Year 2028, which starts in February 2027, so the H&P note wasn't breaking any news there.

It's just another area where Andrada aren't being clear though - up until the Goantagab announcement, the ore-sorters were the great hope for output expansion, and they've just been quietly sidelined for reasons that haven't been fully explained.

It's great news that Goantagab + jig plant appears to offer more output expansion than the ore-sorters, but Andrada still aren't being clear on when the new ore will start flowing and when the new plant will finish commissioning. So once again we're left with a void, and once again the share price drops after what should have been a good RNS.

It's becoming the trend that we all wait expectantly for an RNS, and when it comes, it's often followed by a share price drop because key details are left out of the announcement and it leaves the market guessing.

I agree - I've been watching in amazement as the price creeps up.

The company owns one asset - a field in the middle of the DRC, which hasn't been shown to have anything in it yet. It also has a very, shall we say, "interesting", share ownership register.

I can only assume people are buying in the hope that NIU have some plan to merge other assets into this listed entity and release some value that way - otherwise it makes no sense at all.

Ah yes, the $800k loan that CRTM ended up liable for. What was the source of that $800k loan ? How did CRTM end up liable for it ?

Digging over old ground here, but whilst it was valid in the sense that it existed, I'm not sure it was valid in terms of it being a debt that CRTM incurred.

CRTM, run by Fryer, bought a company owned by Fryer, paid Fryer a lot of money for that company, and as part of the transaction CRTM also took on the debt owed by that company to Fryer. That company had no other way to pay Fryer back - but he created a situation whereby CRTM would pay it back.

As I said - free shares.

I'm assuming he's free to sell given that the recent prospectus detailed the agreements with him quite extensively, and they didn't mention any lock in period for his shares. Given he's no longer a PDMR, why wouldn't he be free to sell ?

"Almost free shares" - absolutely. When you use someone else's money to buy a company you own for an inflated price, and when you grant yourself a bonus, also using someone else's money, when you've failed to achieve anything - and then you convert the payments for those things into shares - the shares are almost free.

As good as it might be to see Fryer move on, the problem it gives remaining holders is that he has a large holding, of almost free shares, that he's totally free to sell anytime now - not that the rules ever stopped him beforehand anyway....

And just like that, Fryer is gone.

Just a pity it took this long, and too many people got taken in by him.

Hopefully he won’t get the chance to do it again.

No. There’s been no money left over to do anything after paying for Russell’s salary, Russell’s Bloomberg subscription, renting an office from Russell, and paying for various other expenses for Russell.

It’s a pity, being a mining company, that it’s not actually been able to mine anything.

On the plus side, Russell is doing OK.

I just checked - there was a transaction of 58,000,000 shares at 14:38hrs on 6th March at 1.85p

I'm obviously not sure of their exact price, but it was the notification that was on 7th March. They crossed the notifiable threshold on 6th March, so were likely accumulating on 5th and 6th.

The SP hit a 3 year low on the 5th below 1.8p, closed on the 6th at 1.95p, and then jumped on the 7th with the announcement that they had bought in.

Thanks TDT, good spot. That's very weird about ACAM. They held 3.5%, about 58m shares, so if they were still fully holding they should be on the list.

There doesn't seem to have been a huge volume of selling, so it's unlikely they've sold out entirely.

Perhaps they've just trimmed their holding a bit - they did buy in at around the 1.8p level, so are on a reasonable gain already.

So, the prospectus released yesterday finally provided some information on what happened with the infamous OM Metals ore sales, where Russell kept banging on about the off-take agreement where they would buy up to 20,000 tonnes and that he already had 6,000 tonnes of ore "ready on the pad", and of course, if OM Metals didn't want it then he had multiple buyers circulating just chomping at the bit, waiting to buy this spectacular copper ore. He had to get the road finished so that he could transport this vast amount of ore to OM Metals......

The truth, revealed in the prospectus, is that he sold 222 tonnes of ore to OM Metals, and no more. The accounts show revenue of £3,575. That equates to £16.10 per tonne.

That's not a price for copper ore. That's a price for mud, rocks and landfill.

Perhaps this reveals why he's gone so quiet and isn't mentioning the road or talking about how much ore he's going to sell each month.