The company had an extended scheduled shutdown at all sites over the Christmas holidays, which, combined with higher than normal rainfall across South East Queensland in January, adversely impacted production in the three months to January.
The company played down the effect of the floods, claiming it recovered quickly after the deluge.
“The extreme weather experienced across South East Queensland in late January had minimal direct impact on New Hope operations,” the company said.
“Operations were suspended at all sites during the peak of the weather, but were resumed quickly and without damage to equipment or site infrastructure.”
There was some damage to the Western Rail System at locations between Ipswich and Toowoomba. The line was repaired and railings resumed on 18 February.
“This outage is not expected to have a material impact on production or sales for the full year, but may necessitate some changes to the logistics and shipping schedule over the short to medium term,” the company said. “Railing continued from the West Moreton operations during the outage period.”
Despite these setbacks, production remains on target to meet full-year estimates, the company said.
Sales for the quarter and first half year were down 12% and 13% respectively on the previous corresponding period, primarily as a result of customers deferring shipments.
Coal exports from Queensland Bulk Handling remained steady at 2.04Mt for the quarter and 4.23Mt for the first six months.
New Hope remains committed to its Coal-to-Liquids project.
Construction of the Jeebropilly plant is continuing, with the bulk of the liquefaction module received on site in late January.
The synthetic gas generator is expected to be delivered within days.
A number of activities are nearing completion, with commissioning expected in the second quarter of the year.
At the Quantex plant, installation of the control and data recording system is underway.
Dry commissioning of the plant has been completed, with wet commissioning planned by month’s end once the fire protection system has been installed, the company said.
