Companies: CBM    CLN   

Loss-making Coal International has raised £8.5 million to repay loans and develop its Maple Creek project in West Virginia.

Cenkos Securities handled the placing at 28p for London-based Coal International, which was supported by its 34 per cent owner and fellow AIM counter Cambrian Mining. The company, which lost £3.2 million in the six months to December partly because of a warm US winter, will use some of the money raised to repay a £6.25 million facility extended in March by Cambrian, and some to advance the Eagle No 1 mine at Maple Creek.

Coal International, headed by chief executive officer Durand Eppler, incurred most of its losses on thermal coal, but Maple Creek is designed to produce premium quality metallurgical coal, for which the market is seen as stronger, and to do so at attractive margins. The company expects first production in the second quarter of this year at an annual rate of 700,000 tonnes.

Advisers said this could equate to profits of £7 million a year from Maple Creek. This should be good news at last for the shares, floated at 75p in 2005 and hitting 116.5p that year before sliding to 27.5p last month and now trade at 31.5p.