(Adds quotes, details on cash flow, background)
MELBOURNE, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Australia's Queensland Nickel (QNI) will need a capital injection of tens of millions of dollars to stay in business until nickel prices recover, the administrator of the struggling plant said on Friday.
"(QNI) will require a capital injection to support the trading losses until there is a turn on the nickel price," FTI Consulting leader John Park told reporters, following a creditors' meeting
"Without that financial support we'll be left with no options to shut the doors and close the business."
The nickel refinery, owned by independent politician Clive Palmer, went into voluntary administration in the middle of January, due to plunging prices of the stainless steel making commodity, and after failing to secure government support in December.
QNI axed 237 jobs at the refinery in Townsville mid-month in a bid to keep the company solvent, Palmer told a local television station over the weekend. said that current cash flow supported trade to April 30. It owes north of A$100 million ($71.27 million) to creditors.
A cash injection could come from a consortium of Palmer-led entities, and FDI have also received approaches from a number of parties who expressed interest in the refinery, Park said.
Queensland Nickel is one of Australia's biggest nickel refineries with a capacity of 35,000 tonnes a year. A slump in the nickel price from nearly $30,000 a tonne in early 2011 to less than $9,000 a tonne amid a mounting supply glut has pushed it into financial difficulty.
The nickel plant also donated millions to Palmer's political party.
A spokesman at Australia's largest rail freight operator, Aurizon, said the company was working closely with administrators in relation to the recovery of about A$20 million debt for rail haulage, as well as to support continuing operations at QNI.
Palmer's purchase of Queensland Nickel from mining giant BHP Billiton (L:BLT) Ltd BHP.AX in 2009 was met with scepticism and surprise after BHP said it could no longer make money.
For Christmas the following year, Palmer presented 55 of its workers with a Mercedes Benz car and gave away 650 holidays to Fiji to employees and their partners to celebrate a bumper year of profitability.
($1 = 1.4031 Australian dollars)