Boom time for BHP in iron ore but copper looks far less rosy
BHP Billiton, the world’s biggest miner, says its first- quarter iron ore production has jumped 8 per cent on strong Chinese demand for highgrade ore.
But the mining titan has cut its forecast for copper production over the year to next June, citing outages at key mines.
BHP yesterday trimmed its copper production forecast for this financial year by about 3 per cent to a range of 1.62 million tonnes to 1.71 million tonnes. It cited reduced production at its Spence and Olympic Dam mines in Chile and Australia respectively.
The Olympic Dam mine was closed for repairs and is expected to resume operations by the end of this month, while operations at Spence continue at partial capacity following a fire in September.
Operations at Spence were expected to reach full capacity during De- cember, the company said in a statement. The outages also hurt production during the quarter, with copper output flat at 409,000 tonnes.
“We are on track to meet guidance for the 2019 financial year across our commodities, except copper where we have reduced production guidance slightly following outages at Olympic Dam in Australia and Spence in Chile,” said BHP chief Andrew Mackenzie.
BHP’s iron ore output rose to 69 million tonnes during the three months to September, compared with 64 million tonnes for the same period a year ago. That was in line with a forecast, of 68.8 million tonnes, by analysts at investment bank UBS.
The Anglo- Australian miner maintained its financial year projection for 273 million to 283 million tonnes of iron ore.
China’s iron ore imports this year have held steady, suggesting demand by the world’s second- biggest economy has not been heavily affected by its trade dispute with the US.
China buys just over half of Australia’s commodity exports.
Nickel production fell 8 per cent after operations at the miner’s Kalgoorlie smelter were suspended following a fire in September. The smelter is expected to ramp back up to full production early next month.