JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The top-brass of the financially stricken coal-mining company Beacon Hill, which has told the London Stock Exchange its working capital will run out by the middle of this month, are proving inaccessible.

The Aim-listed company, which operates the opencast Minas Moatize coking coal operation in Mozambique, further informed the exchange that an insolvency practitioner had been appointed to advise on the potential requirement for it to go into administration "in the near term".

Emailed questions and repeated telephone messages left for CEO Rowan Karstel on Wednesday and Thursday have gone unanswered and the receptionist, who took Mining Weekly Online’s many telephone calls, put the failure of executives to receive calls or respond to recorded messages down to their excessive current busyness.

Headquartered in Centurion, Beacon Hill late last year fell 6% short of the requisite 75% shareholder support threshold to allow it to proceed with a remedial funding plan.

The aborted plan involved a £13-million debt-to-equity loan conversion and a £1.5-million share restructuring, which chairperson Justin Farr-Jones described as the culmination of “considerable negotiation and hard work over a lengthy time period in very difficult market conditions”.

Trading in Beacon Hill shares was last month voluntarily suspended by the company, which also holds mineral tenure over two magnesite deposits at Arthur River and Lyons River in north-western Tasmania, Australia, and majority ownership of the Changara coal exploration project, also in Mozambique.

Earlier this year, Mining Weekly Online reported that Beacon Hill had entered into a sublease of its rolling stock and also quoted the company as saying that it was making steady progress with a new debt facility.

At the time, Karstel – who formerly worked for BHP Billiton, Xstrata and Optimum Coal – was optimistic that Beacon Hill would be able to deliver some resolution for its shareholders before year-end.