Namco slips into watery grave

Out of working capital, and with no hope of its subsidiaries resuming operations, marine diamond miner Namibian Minerals is heading into permanent dry dock as liquidators sell off the company’s assets.

In a prepared statement, the company said there was little prospect of any of the proceeds making their way to unsecured creditors and shareholders.

Namco says that De Beers has surfaced as the main bidder on its former assets, including the Namco Mark II mining tool and plant and equipment aboard the flagship mv Ya Toivo vessel, including the company’s second-generation seabed crawler — Nam 2.

LL Mining is working on finalizing an agreement to pick up the company’s Namibian diamond concessions, the first-generation NamSSol mining tool, the plant and equipment aboard the mv Kovambo, the Wirth drill and mining plant and equipment aboard the mv Zacharias, and the mv Namibian Gem airlift vessel.

As the ongoing liquidation process is out of the hands of Namco’s board, all of its members plan to soon resign.

Once the negotiations are wrapped up, normal winding up procedures will follow.

Namco’s troubles can be traced back to early 2001, when a mining face collapsed on its proprietary NamSSol seabed crawler, burying its main source of income. The crawler was eventually hauled to surface and repaired, but not before the company was forced to place key South African and Namibian subsidiaries into provisional liquidation to ward off hungry creditors and senior lenders.

Despite recent attempts the company was unable to secure further funding from its bankers and principal lenders to keep it afloat.

While Namco’s sinking comes as no shock, its does come on the heels of record production of 117,050 carats during the July-to-September period, when Namco had both the NamSSol and Nam2 mining tools in operation.

Despite the record production, the company only managed to squeeze out a small third-quarter profit of US$96,000 (nil per share) on revenue of US$15.2 million, which was still better than the year-earlier loss of US$940,000 (1 per share) on US$4 million.

For the first nine months of 2002, Namco lost US$32.8 million (33 per share), compared with a year-earlier loss of US$26 million (35 per share). Revenue between the two periods nearly tripled to US$27.2 million from US$10.2 million.