Glencore makes good on slower coal output

Glencore chief Ivan Glasenberg is making good on his promise to slash Australian coal output by 15% this year as part of his pitch on superior “market management” against his iron ore rivals, with the axe to fall on 2 million tonnes of production and about a quarter of the workforce at loss-making Queensland coal mine Collinsville, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Production at the Collinsville mine – one of Glencore's worst performing – is understood to be running in the red. Glencore's entire coal business remains under review.

It was revealed on Wednesday that about a quarter – or 80 of a 340-strong workforce – will be laid off at Collinsville, which opened in 1919 and has been a wellspring of both the Queensland coal industry and the state’s union movement.

Glencore will cut planned production at Collinsville from 4.8Mt to 2.8Mt – in line with its 2014 production of 2.9Mt.

Goldman Sachs says the iron ore market is becoming a ‘zero-sum game’

Goldman Sachs believes the world's biggest iron ore miners are right to press on with expansions into an oversupplied market as reining in supply growth would hurt efficiency and be hard to coordinate, according to Australian Financial Review.

“Efforts to support prices via voluntary production cuts would be counter-productive,” analyst Christian Lelong wrote in a report on Wednesday. While such cutbacks are appealing in theory, any such proposal is misguided, according to Lelong.

Turn out the lights as commodity spending boom ends

Australia, one of the engine rooms of the decade-long global commodity boom, is forecasting a staggering 90% plunge in spending on projects, calling time on its biggest resources bonanza since the 1850s gold rush, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

After a collapse in prices from oil to iron ore, the value of the nation's approved and financed mining and energy projects is forecast fall to about $15 billion in 2017, from $226 billion at the end of April.