Australasian Resources chief executive Zhenya Wang -- who is also a Senate candidate in Western Australia for Mr Palmer's Palmer United Party -- told shareholders yesterday that the struggling company was being bankrolled by Mr Palmer's private vehicle Mineralogy, which has a 70 per cent stake.

He said Mr Palmer, now a federal MP, had provided loans totalling $621,000 in the past five months alone and had given a letter of support confirming he would continue to make cash injections until September next year.

But Mr Wang said Mr Palmer's litigation with Citic Pacific over the nearby Sino Iron project had scared away potential investors, most likely to be Chinese entities, in Australasian's planned Balmoral South magnetite project.

Mineralogy and Citic are fighting over which entity has the right to manage security operations at Cape Preston, the port that Australasian also intends to use for exports.

Citic is unable to begin exports from its Sino Iron mine -- a disastrous project that is at least $6 billion over budget and several years late in being commissioned -- until the case is settled.

"This dispute has presented some difficulties for us in attracting potential investors because they may wonder whether we will have access to the port in future," Mr Wang said at Australasian's annual general meeting in Perth yesterday.

"But we believe that in our commercial agreements with Mineralogy we have the right to access the infrastructure, which includes the port.

"But I think until the case is settled we are going to have a difficult time to convince potential shareholders on this access.

"Once the disputes are settled and once the Citic project is in production, we are very confident that we're going to see some serious interest in investing in the region, specifically in our project."

Mr Wang said he still believed Balmoral South could be built and his priority was to obtain funding from "a couple of interested parties". In the meantime the board was trying to preserve cash by suspending fees for non-executive directors and reducing the size of the company's head office.

"The Balmoral South project is in our view still a very good and viable project, although it's been having difficulties mainly due to our neighbours next door," he said.

After the meeting, Mr Wang said there was no guarantee he would be PUP's candidate if, as expected, the Court of Disputed Returns ordered a re-run of the disputed WA Senate elections. Mr Palmer has lodged a petition with the High Court asking it to uphold the result of the first ballot count, when Mr Wang and Labor's Louise Pratt were initially elected.

The Chinese-born Mr Wang, 32, has previously described Mr Palmer as an "inspirational" leader and promised to resign from Australasian if elected to the Senate.

Australasian is chaired by Mr Palmer's long-time associate, former Deloitte chief Domenic Martino, who was comfortably re-elected at yesterday's meeting. Australasian Resources shares almost trebled in the days after the September 7 federal election, but they have since retreated.