Hardship fears for True North creditors as briefing looms

True North Copper creditors' meetings are due to be held online on Thursday, with company records showing the miner owes about $1.5 million to trade creditors. This is in addition to about $25 million in secured debt, according to a spokeswoman for the company's administrators, KordaMentha. Cloncurry Mayor Greg Campbell is concerned about the likely hardship to local businesses who had been dealing with True North, saying he would hate to see anyone 'go to the wall' due to the financing issues or poor management of a mining company. True North had started mining at the Wallace North pit within its Cloncurry Copper Project and was producing copper sulphate from the plant at Great Australia Mine before a cashflow crisis took its toll. "We've had a meeting with some of the senior True North staff to try to get a handle on it, and our finance team has met with the administrators because the council itself is owed a considerable amount of money through rates - and essentially that's the community that's owed that money," Cr Campbell said. "But we're also talking to a number of businesses to try to understand how much they're owed, because that's our No.1 concern - the local employees and the local businesses, that the administrators essentially look after them. "Different versions of companies that have been operating at Great Australia have burnt local employees and local businesses before and it's just not good enough. "You should be able to do business with a company and, doing a good job, providing your services, you should be able to expect to get paid." Cr Campbell said the council had received a fairly standard response from the administrators, who were still working through financing issues and whether they could keep operations going. He was also concerned about the cut they would take, and how much would be left 'in the pot' for local businesses. True North’s directors appointed Richard Tucker and Tony Miskiewicz of KordaMentha as voluntary administrators last week. The administration covers the entities True North Copper Limited, TNC Mining Pty Ltd, CopperCorp Pty Ltd, North West Copper Pty Ltd and TNC Asset Holding Pty Ltd. True North Copper's mineral projects are being advertised for sale, headlined as an opportunity to acquire a significant copper producing asset in Queensland. A listing on sales site Minesonline.com says the administrators are seeking urgent expressions of interest for the acquisition and/or recapitalisation of True North Copper. 'The opportunity includes the acquisition of some or all of the project assets, including the copper producing Cloncurry project, Mount Oxide project and Bundarra development and exploration project, all of which have significant upside potential,' the listing states.

Hardship fears for True North creditors as briefing looms

Industry Queensland

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