UK 16:17 Monday, 26 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Sable Mining (SBLM), the AIM listed piece of Turkish run by Andrew Groves - the long time business partner of ex cricketer Phil Edmonds has been forced to deny that he has been indicted for trial on charges of bribery and corruption in Liberia. Okay Andy whatever you say....
Although it may be that some traders looking at the daily share price chart of Sable Mining (SBLM) decide that this is a situation which is simply too volatile to consider trading, there does appear to be a method in the charting madness for these shares.
Sable Mining Africa (SBLM), the AIM-quoted company founded by veteran Zambian-born cricketer and entrepreneur Phil Edmonds, has for long suffered in investors’ appraisal because of its heavy involvement with iron ore, which now trades in the $50 a tonne region, a third of boom-time peaks. But its shares enjoyed a spike the other day on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed with CITIC Group, the People’s Republic of China’s overseas investment corporation, to establish a 600-megawatt central African power station at the company’s Lubu coal project in Zimbabwe.
Iron ore is hardly flavour of the month in metal markets, China’s well-ventilated economic woes having sent the price down from nearly $192 (£138) a tonne in 2011 to a recent $44 before reaching $53.210c a tonne now. But AIM dog Sable Mining Africa (SBLM) is disposing of coal and other ‘non-core’ assets to concentrate on its West African Nimba iron ore project in south-east Guinea.
A recent 6% bounce in iron ore prices at the Chinese port of Tianjin to $53.3 a tonne may or may not prove to be the harbinger of a significant rally in the metal’s depressed price after falling from $110 a tonne last summer to a recent low of $44.10c. But it might bring some comfort to bombed-out Sable Mining Africa (SBLM), which has announced sine encouraging metallurgical test results from its key Nimba iron ore project in the West African state of Guinea.
Depressed iron ore prices and a heavy capital expenditure programme, not to mention the ebola virus, had pushed shares in Guinea-focused iron ore play Sable Mining Africa (SBLM) through the floor not so long ago, sending them crashing from an 11.25p year’s high to 0.65p, as the bad news seemed to pile up. Now, however, they have rallied to 2.05p, helped by an ‘Infrastructure Development Agreement’ (IDA) with the government of Guinea’s West African neighbour, Liberia, to facilitate the shipment of iron ore from Sable’s key Nimba project by rail 270 km. to the Liberian port of Buchanan.
For a company which has lost 94% of its stockmarket value in six years and has chalked up a $3.3 million (£2.1 million) first-half loss, funding a $300 million project to mine a mineral whose price has dropped 50% in a year must present certain challenges. Yet Sable Mining Africa (SBLM) is exuding characteristic confidence as its directors consider the alternatives open to the AIM-quoted outfit to bring its Nimba iron ore project in Guinea, one of the West African countries in the ebola front line, to fruition.
Phil Edmonds is a hard act to follow, but Jim Cochrane, the seasoned mining veteran who is taking over from the cricketer-turned entrepreneur as non-executive chairman of Sable Mining Africa (SBLM), maintains he is joining just when the AIM-quoted company’s key project, the Mount Nimba iron ore venture in the West African state of Guinea, is poised to take off.
