No @edgescape GNG (GR Engineering) don't do mining at all, they are an engineering and construction company to the mining sector, so in Galena's case they built the 1.2 million tonne p.a. lead sulphide flotation processing plant and associated infrastructure for the Abra Base Metals Project in WA in late 2021 and 2022 for $79.5 million. In addition, Abra Mining also awarded GR Engineering an EPC contract to relocate, refurbish and commission the Abra Mining owned Higginsville paste plant for a further $10 million. Once that lot was completed and commissioned, GNG's work was done and they moved on to other projects for other companies. [I hold GNG shares both here and IRL]. See here: Abra Base Metals Project – Notice to Proceed (gres.com.au) [Sept 2021]

Red Dust Holdings were involved in the clearing and pad preparation for the processing plant at Abra - see here: Abra-Plant-Site-Works-Commencement.pdf (galenamining.com.au) [Nov 2021] Red Dust Holdings also had an ongoing contract for the Abra mine site road maintenance (its an unsealed road that requires regular maintenance and sections need to be watered at times to reduce nuisance dust) - see here: (21) Post | LinkedIn Red Dust Holdings (a private/unlisted company) did the initial earthworks for the new aerodrome, tailings storage facility (TSF) and process plant infrastructure pads at Abra, but their sole ongoing role appears to be the road maintenance contract.

Byrnecut Australia Pty Limited is a foreign-owned private company that provides contract mining services. They specialise in underground mining. The company employs approximately 4,410 people through its operations in Australia and is headquartered in Perth. They do underground mining all over the world, including in Africa, and they also do shaft sinking and bore raising, however their role at Abra was that Byrnecut Underground Contractors were awarded the development and mining works associated with the first 4 years of the mine life. See here. Underground development commenced in October 2021 at Abra - so Byrnecut would certainly be affected. They are a massive company however. Byrnecut Australia is a majority-owned subsidiary of British Virgin Islands-based Thyssen Global Mining Ltd. See here: Byrnecut Story - Timeline - Byrnecut and here: Byrnecut Australia Pty Ltd - Company Profile Report | IBISWorld. And here: Abra - Byrnecut

Galena Mining ramps up Abra development work with major contracts finalised | ASX:G1A (proactiveinvestors.com.au) [Sept 2021]

Cobham is Cobham Aviation Services, now owned by Leidos Australia (see here: (21) Cobham Aviation Services: Overview | LinkedIn) so they would have provided the FIFO flights to Abra from Perth - as Abra is fairly remote:

Source: https://www.abramining.com.au/site/abra-mine/overview

Pacific Energy own and operate the Power Plant that supplies power to Abra. Pacific Energy specialise in BOO - Build, Own, Operate - remote power plants for mining companies. In Abra's case Pacific Energy have built a hybrid/renewable plant comprising a 7MW solar farm, a 2MW BESS (battery energy storage system), a 10MW high-efficiency–low emissions gas generation plant and a 1,100kl LNG storage and regasification facility. See here: Abra Power Station - Pacific Energy

28 Villages had the accomodation village and catering contract at Abra - see here: 28 Villages | Mining Village Management Services

Source: https://www.abramining.com.au/site/content/

Abra during construction - source: https://www.byrnecut.com/projects/oceania/australia/abra/

Above: Early on - during construction. (Source: Byrnecut Underground Mining)

Abra last year. Source: https://www.australianresourcesandinvestment.com.au/2023/07/25/abra-australias-emerging-lead-silver-mine/ [25-July-2023]

It was and is a significant project, and I expect it will be up and running again when metal prices are higher. Perhaps under different ownership. For now however, all of those companies (shown below) are negatively affected, except for GR Engineering (GNG) who completed their work at Abra in 2022 I believe. The current G1A voluntary trading suspension has been requested until the earlier of January 31st or an announcement to the market of the outcome of the strategic review - it does NOT look good. The "discussions with key stakeholders" definitely includes their banking/lending provider(s), and these sort of discussions are usually required when companies are unable to meet their debt repayment schedule and/or don't have sufficient capital to fund ongoing operations.

Earlier in his "career", Tony James (Galena's MD, pictured above, in the middle) was involved in a couple of early-stage mining companies that got bought out by larger companies at good premiums and shareholders did well out of those takeovers, but that was during the last big mining boom and Mr James has been involved in a few projects since then that have NOT been good for their shareholders. Galena (G1A) might be another one to add to that list. The common demoninator in these later projects appears to be higher operating costs than expected rather than lower commodity prices.

In this case, Abra is a lead and silver mine, and the lead price is slightly below where it was 5 and 10 years ago, as shown below, and also only slightly below where it was one year ago (-4.36%).

Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lead

Similarly, the silver price is only -5.59% below where it was one year ago and is actually higher than where it was 2, 5 and 10 years ago.

Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/silver

Previous updates do mention silver, but the latest was all about lead, so I think it's really only the lead price that matters most to Abra, and the lead price is roughly where it was 1 year, 5 years and 10 years ago, just a little lower - like less than 5% lower. So, unless they're worried about significantly lower prices in the future than where lead is currently - I would suggest that the lead price is not their main problem here. Their problems are likely to be high costs and perhaps too much optimism in prior years - such as during the feasibility stages and the financing stages - about the future trajectory of the lead price - and also being too bullish on how low their costs were going to be (i.e. not realistic enough) and how quickly the processing plant would ramp up to full nameplate capacity.

The Abra Lead/Silver Project is 100% owned by AMPL, which is a 60:40 joint venture between Galena Mining Limited (G1A) and the leading producer of lead in Japan, Toho Zinc Co., Ltd. (TSE: 5707). AMPL completed a Feasibility Study (FS) (see Galena ASX announcement of 22 July 2019: Galena_Abra_FS_22Jul2019.pdf) for development of a mechanised underground mine and concentrator (processing plant) with a 16-year life producing a high-value, high-grade lead-silver concentrate containing approximately 95kt of lead and 805koz of silver per year once steady-state production was achieved. 

Note they did their own FS, rather than use a reputable company that specialises in such studies. Problems are likely to be (a) ramp up issues/achieving nameplate capacity throughput with the processing plant, (b) recovery issues (not extracting enough of the metal from the ore), and/or (c) higher costs than anticipated.

Having had a brief skim through a few of Galena's recent announcements, it looks like positive spin about everything, in the usual style of Tony James, with very little in there to cause shareholders to become worried. It's way more helpful when company management are up-front and honest with their shareholders about how the company is travelling, but they often tend to hide or ignore the bad news until they can't any longer, as appears to be the case here.

Disclosure: Of the companies mentioned above, I hold GNG, but not G1A or any others that were mentioned.