The Gambian government has cancelled Carnegie Minerals’ licence to mine heavy mineral sands.

AIM-quoted Carnegie, which drew £417,500 revenues from its Sayang joint venture in The Gambia in the six months to June, says it has already made ‘full provision’ for this development. It is almost a month since the Gambian government ordered the West Australian company to suspend operations at the joint venture, where production of heavy mineral concentrate for shipment to China had increased 42 per cent to 22,767 tonnes between the third and fourth quarters of last year.

Then the authorities requested more information from Perth-based Carnegie, chaired by Aussie entrepreneur Alan Burns and steered by managing director Alan Hopkins. The company was progressing with £2 million funding from its joint venture partner, the China-focused Australian group Astron.

Carnegie, which lost £420,500 in the six months to last June and earlier this month raised £1.1 million at 4p from major shareholder RAB Capital, says it is now continuing to focus on its other projects. These include Niafrang in neighbouring Senegal, which is estimated to hold five million tonnes of high-grade mineral sands and heavy metals.

Floated at 8p in 2006, Carnegie shares soon reached 11.75p, but it has been mostly downhill since then. Now 2.88p, down 1.12p this morning, they are a gamble on Senegal coming right while other arrangements remain intact.

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