The company believes it could have increased production even more but strategically slowed down the ramp-up during the low coking coal price period.

“Production growth was impacted by decisions to counter the low coal price environment, including moving from dual longwall to a single longwall operation at Oaky North and Collinsville being placed on care and maintenance, following an inability to agree an appropriate enterprise agreement with the union,” the company said.

Turning to thermal coal, Glencore’s Rolleston project in Queensland and Ravensworth North and Ulan expansion projects in New South Wales were the star performers, helping the company increase its Australian thermal coal production by 9% to 57.7Mt.

Total coal production across the group was 138.1Mt in 2013, a 4% increase over 2012.

South Africa thermal coal production was 43.5Mt in 2013, a reduction of 5% compared to 2012. This relates mainly to proactively reducing production, including a decision not to produce bypass coal at Tweefontein, resulting in reduced yields and a decision not to reclaim dump material at Impunzi.

Adverse ground conditions, heavy rain, industrial action and some equipment delays also impacted production, particularly in Q4 2013.

Prodeco produced 18.6Mt of coal in 2013, a 26% increase over 2012.

The increase reflects the continuation of the expansion project which is expected to increase production to about 21Mpta, in line with the capacity specified in the Puerto Nuevo port concession.

The $550 million Puerto Nuevo project, which completed on time and budget, started loading on April 13 and was operating at required capacity.

Cerrejon produced 11.0Mt of coal, 5% below 2012, predominantly due to the impact of the 32-day strike in Q1 2013.