Australia’s Northern Star Resources said on Thursday third-quarter gold sales dropped 10.1% from the prior quarter and raised unit cost expectations due to downtime at its major projects.
The miner, set to be the biggest Australian gold miner if Newcrest Mining’s buyout by Newmont Corp is successful, halted its Pogo operations in Alaska, US, for three weeks to repair a mill motor.
However, this was shorter than the six-week halt it had initially expected. The project resumed production in early April.
Along with mill downtime at its Kalgoorlie operations in Western Australia, it led the company to raise its guidance for All-in Sustaining Cost, a measure of unit costs, to between A$1,730 and A$1,760 per ounce from A$1,630 to A$1,690 for the fiscal year.
However, full-year production guidance was left unchanged at 1.6 million ounces to 1.7 million ounces. The company sold 363,000 ounces of gold in the quarter ended March 31 compared with 404,000 oz in the December quarter.
(By Harshita Swaminathan; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Arun Koyyur)
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