Andrew Gillies has departed from Metallica Minerals once again but did his latest tenure do any good?

A Brisbane mining entrepreneur has stepped down as a director of the loss-making company he co-founded, just two years after returning to the fray to help stabilise it.

He jumped back into the fray two years ago to help stabilise the struggling junior resources outfit he co-founded in Brisbane in 1997.

But Andrew Gillies this week once again stepped down as a director of Metallica Minerals as part of a well-flagged board succession plan.

That prompted us to wonder if anything had really changed at the loss-making company, which still has no steady revenue stream after all these years and seems stuck in perpetual “exploration’’ mode.

Metallica ditched its problem-plagued flagship Urquhart Point bauxite project near Weipa last year and is now focused on developing a silica sands project at Cape Flattery, about 200km north of Cairns. It incurred $3m of red ink in the last financial year.

Andrew Gillies

Despite all that, Metallica chairman Theo Psaros lavished praise on Gillies and fellow director Scott Waddell as they headed for the exits this week.

“We weathered a period of significant uncertainty and challenges in the period from 2019 to mid-2020 but now have the company well-placed to deliver growth and opportunity for shareholders,’’ he said.

That was a veiled reference to a shareholder revolt over the company’s poor performance, corporate spending and ill-fated deals, including a disastrous $45m merger scheme that collapsed at the 11th hour.

A $615,000 compo package for the then-boss only further enraged rebel stakeholders, who spilled the board and turfed out three directors in early 2019. They then voted back in Gillies, the former managing director who had previously resigned in 2017, as well as Psaros and Waddell.

Since then, the company has reported back-to-back annual losses and the share price has remained largely unchanged.

Despite the lack of any actual mineral production since its launch nearly 25 years ago, Metallica was still able to raise $6.5m last year from investors, including billionaire coal baron Brian Flannery.

They apparently see promise in the Cape Flattery project, which could theoretically start making first shipments by 2023. Global demand for silica, which is used in glass, fracking and more, is tipped to grow from $US8bn today to $US20bn by 2024.

Company directors obviously feel pretty comfortable they’ll still be around in the near term. They signed a four-year lease in July for office space in Fortitude Valley.

Gillies, who still controls 5.7 million shares in the company, did not return a call seeking comment Thursday.

Matt Latimore

NEW LIFE IN MOTHBALLED MINE

They only announced plans in April to breathe new life into a mothballed coal mine in the Bowen Basin.

But already the two Brisbane-based joint venture partners aiming to rehabilitate the Millennium and Mavis Downs mine appear to have made great progress.

Stanmore Coal and Matt Latimore’s M Resources, which trades under the banner of MetRes, shelled out $1.25m in cash for the site from Peabody Energy Australia and will likely pay another $1.25m in royalties once production gets under way.

Now M Mining, the JV manager and mine operator, has just announced a $425m contract with mining outfit PIMS Group to provide a raft of underground services over the next five years.

The deal is set to create up to 100 jobs at the mine and another 125 in the region.