Whitehaven Coal says its fourth-quarter production almost doubles
The company's Blackwater and Daunia mines in Queensland, which it recently purchased from BHP, produced 4.8 million tonnes.
Australia’s South32 Ltd posted a 31% jump in quarterly metallurgical coal output on Tuesday, as production recovered after the diversified miner completed an extended longwall move at its flagship Illawarra project in New South Wales.
Shares of the company, however, sank more than 11% in their biggest intraday drop since March 2020, as concerns about demand from top consumer China triggered a broad-based sell-off in commodities. The broader mining sub-index dropped 5.7% to its lowest in more than a month.
Improved labour market conditions and normalisation of operations after the completion of the extended longwall move at its Dendrobium underground mine in Illawarra helped South32 push metallurgical coal output to 1.57 million tonnes (mt) in its third quarter ended March 31 from 1.19 mt in the prior quarter. Analysts at Barrenjoey said the result was “in-line”.
Last week, mining giants like BHP Group Ltd and Rio Tinto Ltd blamed pandemic-related labour crunch for weaker-than-expected quarterly production.
South32 raised its annual operating unit cost guidance across different commodities it mines, reflecting stronger producer currencies, higher raw material costs and a rise in commodity prices.
For fiscal 2022, South32 now expects a unit cost of $126 per tonne for Illawarra metallurgical coal, compared to its prior estimate of $115 per tonne, driven by a stronger Australian dollar.
The company reported payable copper equivalent production of 9,700 tonnes from its share of the Sierra Gorda mine in Chile, after completing the acquisition of a 45% stake in the project worth A$1.55 billion ($1.11 billion) in February.
Additionally, the miner said it had stopped commodity sales to Russian entities and that it would not enter into any new transactions with them. It, however, said its exposure to Russia via commodity sales had historically been limited.
($1 = 1.3931 Australian dollars)
(By Harish Sridharan; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Subhranshu Sahu)
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