Navan Mining group has completed the disposal of its debt-ridden Spanish subsidiaries, a move the company hopes will shore up losses and boost its ailing share price.

Navan has sold the Aguas Tenidas zinc and copper mine in Andalucia to Spanish company Insersa in return for royalty payments based on future earnings to a maximum of $2.66 million (€2.67 million).

Insersa has acquired a 100 per cent stakehold in Navan Resources (Huelva) S.A.U, which filed for the Spanish equivalent of US Chapter 11 proceedings last December.

But Navan was unable to find a buyer for the nearby Almagrera mine and has placed it in liquidation.

The company, based in London and listed on the London and Dublin stock exchanges, hopes to attract a buyer for the facility's ore processing plant, conservatively valued at $50 million. Two other Spanish subsidiaries are to be dissolved and liquidated.

Navan believes jettisoning the Spanish operation will mollify investors, who have seen its share price slide to 2.5p sterling from 48.5p over the past 12 months. The sale completes a restructuring process embarked on late last year when the global downturn hastened the collapse of the international ore market.

In the past five years, copper prices have fallen from $2,600 a tonne to $1,400 a tonne. Zinc has tumbled in value from $1,200 a tonne to $700 a tonne.

A key plank of the restructuring plan, unveiled at an extraordinary general meeting last February, was the settlement with Enron Corporation of a $15 million pre-finance debt.

Navan made a $2 million cash payment and agreed the issue and allotment to Enron of a number of new ordinary shares at 15 cents to a maximum of $3.4 million.

The company has also published an updated resource estimate of its copper and gold mine in Chelopech, Bulgaria.

Navan posted pre-tax losses of $6.5 million for the first half of 2001, compared with a loss of $4.3 million in the same period last year.