The mining giant’s Australian coking coal production reached 2.9 million tonnes in the recent half-year – a fall of 28% from the 4Mt clocked up in the corresponding period of 2013.
Glencore, which cut 450 jobs from the Newlands and Oaky Creek mines in the Bowen Basin in late June 2013, also attributed blame to geotechnical conditions at its prized Oaky North longwall mine.
“The decrease relates to cost reduction initiatives, which led to mine plan and/or roster changes at Newlands, Oaky Creek and Collinsville, the latter also being affected by industrial issues,” Glencore said.
“Volumes were also temporarily impacted when mining through a fault zone at Oaky North.”
While coking coal output was scaled back from the higher-cost aspects of its Queensland operations, Glencore’s total Australian production of export thermal coal climbed 12% year on year to 26Mt in the recent half.
This was underpinned by the May start-up of the Ulan West longwall operation in New South Wales’ western coalfields, which has nameplate capacity of 6.7Mt per annum of thermal coal.
The combined national thermal and semi-soft coking coal output was 30.5Mt for 2014’s first-half – an 8% gain year on year.
“The increase relates to the production ramp-up at Ravensworth North and Rolleston, productivity gains at Ulan underground and Bulga and the commencement of longwall operations at Ulan West,” Glencore said.
Globally Glencore produced 71.2Mt of coal in the half-year period, which was an annual increase of 5%.
There was a 31% increase in production from the vast Cerrejon coal mine in Colombia, which mainly reflected the impacts of the industrial action in 1H13.
Glencore’s South African domestic thermal coal output fell 2% year on year – making it the only other company coal division that declined in output apart from the Australian coking and semi-soft coking coal units.
The diversified mining and commodities trading house, which merged with Xstrata in May 2013, warned it could pursue further coal cutbacks this week while announcing it would cut 100 jobs from the Newlands complex by the end of September.
“Glencore continues to review all coal operations in an increasingly difficult economic climate,” it said.
