The critical minerals era is supposed to be upon us, but all the talk about huge demand for new copper, nickel, lithium and cobalt mines couldn’t save one of Australia’s nickel establishment, Panoramic Resources.

Burdened by nickel prices at three-year lows, repeated setbacks at its ageing Savannah nickel project, a decade of acquisitions that didn’t fire and a major shareholder with plenty of its own issues, Panoramic Resources’ chairman Nick Cernotta called in the administrators to try to fix the mess.