Nathan Tinkler back with play for Lady Annie mine

Former rich-lister Nathan Tinkler appears to be plotting a return to the Australian resources sector.

Nathan Tinkler could be back in resources. Picture: Hollie Adams.

Former rich-lister Nathan Tinkler appears to be quietly plotting a return to the Australian resources sector, with his Singapore-registered Bentley Resources listed as part of a $1 bid to buy the Lady Annie coppermine in north Queensland.

The mine has been owned and operated by one-time Owen Hegarty vehicle CST Group since 2010, after the Hong Kong-listed company bought it for $135 million from Tony Sage’s Cape Lambert Resources.

CST won approval from its shareholders last month to sell the loss-making copper operation to Bentley Resources and unlisted Australian company Kombi Mining, “as trustee of the Lady Annie Trust”.

It is not clear who is behind the Lady Annie Trust, which was established in February, just before CST first announced it had a deal to sell the mine, but Kombi Mining is owned by Queensland businessman Shane O’Connell, who operates earthmoving and equipment hire businesses in southeast Queensland.

The disclosure documents list Bentley Resources as the second purchaser, although separate documents filed by CST suggest it may also be acting as trustee for the Lady Annie Trust.

Under the terms of the deal, the two companies will pay $1 for Lady Annie, which produced 2296 tonnes of copper cathode in the 12 months to the end of March and booked a $US3.7m ($5.2m) loss for the year, and ­assume up to $22.7m of the $262.6m in inter-company loans owed by CST’s Australian arm to its parent company.

The buyers will also take on outstanding power contracts signed over to Lady Annie’s ­operations, and assume responsibility for the long-running mine’s rehabilitation obligations.

CST told shareholders the mine’s copper oxide deposits were nearly exhausted and, although the agreement with Bentley and Kombi includes provision for additional payments if nearby deposits are developed, it is not clear what the two companies plan to do with the mine if their tilt at the operation is successful.

Contacted by The Australian yesterday, Mr O’Connell confirmed he was the owner and sole director of Kombi, and was acting on behalf of the Lady Annie Trust, but would not comment on his partners in the offer, nor his plans if the bid was successful.

He said he was not directly ­involved in negotiations over the acquisition or in raising funds to back the purchase, saying the details were being handled by “third-party consultants”, unrelated to Kombi or Bentley.

Mr Tinkler initially denied any personal involvement with the bid, but did not respond to questions about why Bentley was listed by CST as one of the buyers.

The former rich-lister has long had an interest in Queensland copper, having picked up swathes of prospective ground north of Mount Isa as he was putting together Aston Resources, the company that made him Australia’s youngest billionaire, later sold into Whitehaven Coal along with another Tinkler-owned company, Boardwalk Resources, in a $5 billion merger deal in 2012.

After pouring millions into horse racing and buying rugby league and soccer clubs in Newcastle, his fortune tanked with the coal price, and his business empire collapsed in 2016, owing $540m.

His personal bankruptcy was annulled in 2017 when creditors accepted just over $1m in settlements of their debts, but Mr Tink­ler still has eight months of a disqualification banning him from directing Australian companies, resulting from the liquidation of a multitude of his personal vehicles as the wheels fell off his business empire.

Late last year Mr Tinkler launched legal action against Whitehaven Coal in Queensland, alleging it had failed to make good on promises to develop four Boardwalk projects, denying milestone payments to Boardwalk holders.

That legal action was moved to NSW earlier this year, and Mr Tinkler denied being personally involved in the suit when contacted this week. The NSW Supreme Court Registry lists him as the plaintiff “as trustee for the Boardwalk Resources Trust”.

Lady Annie sits just north of Mount Isa in Queensland’s richest base metals district. It was ­developed by Perth-based CopperCo, which opened the heap-leaching operation in October 2007 before collapsing only a year later.

Mr Sage’s Cape Lambert bought CopperCo’s assets for $100m in 2009, and flipped Lady Annie to CST within a year.

The mine has a troubled history and has struggled to make money under CST’s ownership. It has also been the subject of two of the biggest environmental fines in Queensland’s history, first being hit with a $500,000 penalty for releasing contaminated material into waterways during flooding in 2009. It was then fined $210,000 after pleading guilty to “wilfully” contravening environmental regulations and neglecting mine infrastructure, which led to a second release in 2014.