Shares in a major Australian resource engineering firm have plummeted on the back of its latest figures.

Metals processor Bradken reported a $93 million loss for the six months to December, causing its share price to crash.

This year’s big loos compares poorly to a $38 million profit in the same period a year earlier.

When the market opened after the figures were announced, Bradken shares went down more than 23 per cent in the just a few minutes.

The mining engineers are today trading around $2.40 a share, a big drop from the $15 a share it enjoyed in late 2007.

Bradken’s report said sales revenue dipped 12 per cent due to weak commodity prices and restructuring costs, as the company tried to manage the drop off in mining investment.

The company has spent $47 million on a large-scale restructure, and been made to bear $51 million worth of plant and equipment impairment.

Today’s drop comes just weeks after Bradken saw a 30 per cent reduction in share value following a failed takeover bid from US private equity firms Bain Capital and Pacific Equity Partners.

The company says it has cut its global workforce by more than 10 per cent to just over 4,400 employees.

Any improvement will be gradual, the company says.

“We expect a slight increase in overall sales revenue in the second half, with an incremental improvement in margins,” CEO Brian Hodges said in the statement accompanying the results.