Australian coal miner South32 said Wednesday that its metallurgical coal production at its Illawarra Metallurgical Coal business more than halved year on year in the second half of 2017 following the suspension of operations at its Appin Colliery.
IMC produced 1.28 million mt of metallurgical coal in July-December, down 55% on the year.
In the October-December quarter, the metallurgical coal production totalled 788,000 mt, a slump of 43% from the year-ago period but 60% up from the July-September quarter, which was more heavily impacted by the Appin outage.
South32 said that a longwall at its Dendrobium operation progressing through a faulted zone also had an impact on the production.
The miner suspended operations at the Appin colliery, which typically contributes around 60% to the IMC production, in late June due to elevated gas levels.
"At the Appin colliery, we successfully restarted one underground longwall on October 13 and remain committed to our ramp-up plan as we seek to reset the operation's culture and drive productivity to an acceptable level," South32 CEO Graham Kerr said Wednesday.
The ramp-up plan involves bringing Appin's second longwall back online in the October-December quarter of this year, after which the mine is intended to have its production lifted back to its historical rates of more than 8 million mt/year.
The Australian government last week flagged in its Resources and Energy Quarterly report that there is a potential for fresh disruptions to the production with "the threat of industrial action by miners at the Appin mine."
Meanwhile, South32 maintained its metallurgical coal production guidance for IMC at 3.35 million mt. For the 2016-2017 fiscal year, the actual production totalled 5.70 million mt.
IMC operates in the southern coalfields of the Australian state of New South Wales and exports to the global market via the Port Kembla Coal Terminal.
