The pain will continue for Illawarra Coal in the current quarter with a longwall move at West Cliff scheduled to begin this September.

Illawarra Coal’s production for the quarter was 1.6 million tonnes compared with the 2Mt for the previous corresponding period.

Overall, metalliferous coal production was 7.9Mt, and was still badly affected by the Queensland floods.

The remnant effects of wet weather that persisted for much of the 2011 financial year continued to restrict its Queensland Coal business in the Bowen Basin, despite an “unrelenting focus on recovery efforts”

“While production did improve in the June 2011 quarter, sales remained well below the record level achieved in the previous corresponding quarter,” the company said.

“We continue to expect production, sales and unit costs to be impacted, to some extent, for the remainder of the 2011 calendar year.”

The story was better in the energy coal department with production at 3.79Mt compared with 2.8Mt for the previous corresponding period, mostly because of the ramp up of its Hunter Valley operations.

Annual production of 13.6Mt and sales records for Hunter Valley Energy Coal were recorded following the commissioning and ramp up of the MAC20 project and utilisation of its Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group port capacity.

Strong performance at South Africa Coal, which delivered a 13% increase in annual production, was partly offset by planned and unplanned outages at New Mexico Coal (US) and weather related disruptions at Cerrejon Coal (Colombia).