Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
“Well, we’re a little bit disappointed with the level of sales we’ve been able to achieve in this first quarter,” Mr McAleese says. “We did just under .8 million tonnes for the quarter.
"We were expecting to do a little bit better than that but the infrastructure issues that still persist in the coal chain linking the mines to Dalrymple Bay (coal port) are still hurting our total sales.
“When we did our full-year roadshow back in September of this year, we forecast sales of 4.5 million tonnes for the financial year 2008,” Mr McAleese says.
“However, given the infrastructure issues that have persisted over the first quarter we’re going to have to reduce our full year target back to four million tonnes for the year.”
Macarthur Coal is currently transforming itself from coal mine owner to owner-operator.
While the outlook for the first half of the 2008 financial year is not ideal, Macarthur Coal is in an excellent position to take advantage of increased port capacity when it comes online.
“From then on we have in place the mechanisms to grow our production and in fact we recently completed an upgrade of the coal prep. plant at Moorvale, where we lifted capacity from 450 tonnes an hour up to 600 tonnes an hour and that was in anticipation of the extra port capacity that we have coming to us,” Mr McAleese says.
“So right now we have the installed capacity at both of our mines to produce about six million tonnes of coal product and as I said before, we’re only going to be selling four million tonnes this year, so you can see, we’re ready to go and ready to increase our production as the port capacity comes through.”
Despite current infrastructure concerns, the combination of increased global steel production and positive price movement for coal are encouraging signs for the future, Mr McAleese says.
“Spot prices that we’ve seen recently for most of the traded coals - and that’s thermal coal along with hard coking coal - and very limited spot sales of the same sort of product that we produce, that’s low-vol PCI, have certainly been much, much higher than the contracted rates that we’re currently selling at.
“So the expectations for the next 12 months or so is that we will get a good price rise for our product next year but given the way that the Australian dollar has moved over the course of this year, we need a fairly significant price just to stand still in terms of Australian dollar revenue, but certainly the steel industry is doing very well.
“So, therefore, demand for our type of coal is quite strong.”
Continuing strong demand is exactly what Macarthur Coal is looking for as it undertakes the transition to owner-operator.
“Downer-EDI mining have now ceased mining all of the truck and shovel overburden at that operation (Coppabella) and we have taken over that part of the mining from August of this year,” Mr McAleese says.
“We have the new trucks starting to arrive, in fact I think the first truck has been built and the first load of overburden shifted with that. The shovel is currently under construction and is due to be finished, I think it’s the end of December this year, and that will be on time and on budget so far.
“Those two things will make quite a significant difference to our costs in the long run, at the mine at Coppabella.”
"We were expecting to do a little bit better than that but the infrastructure issues that still persist in the coal chain linking the mines to Dalrymple Bay (coal port) are still hurting our total sales.
“When we did our full-year roadshow back in September of this year, we forecast sales of 4.5 million tonnes for the financial year 2008,” Mr McAleese says.
“However, given the infrastructure issues that have persisted over the first quarter we’re going to have to reduce our full year target back to four million tonnes for the year.”
Macarthur Coal is currently transforming itself from coal mine owner to owner-operator.
While the outlook for the first half of the 2008 financial year is not ideal, Macarthur Coal is in an excellent position to take advantage of increased port capacity when it comes online.
“From then on we have in place the mechanisms to grow our production and in fact we recently completed an upgrade of the coal prep. plant at Moorvale, where we lifted capacity from 450 tonnes an hour up to 600 tonnes an hour and that was in anticipation of the extra port capacity that we have coming to us,” Mr McAleese says.
“So right now we have the installed capacity at both of our mines to produce about six million tonnes of coal product and as I said before, we’re only going to be selling four million tonnes this year, so you can see, we’re ready to go and ready to increase our production as the port capacity comes through.”
Despite current infrastructure concerns, the combination of increased global steel production and positive price movement for coal are encouraging signs for the future, Mr McAleese says.
“Spot prices that we’ve seen recently for most of the traded coals - and that’s thermal coal along with hard coking coal - and very limited spot sales of the same sort of product that we produce, that’s low-vol PCI, have certainly been much, much higher than the contracted rates that we’re currently selling at.
“So the expectations for the next 12 months or so is that we will get a good price rise for our product next year but given the way that the Australian dollar has moved over the course of this year, we need a fairly significant price just to stand still in terms of Australian dollar revenue, but certainly the steel industry is doing very well.
“So, therefore, demand for our type of coal is quite strong.”
Continuing strong demand is exactly what Macarthur Coal is looking for as it undertakes the transition to owner-operator.
“Downer-EDI mining have now ceased mining all of the truck and shovel overburden at that operation (Coppabella) and we have taken over that part of the mining from August of this year,” Mr McAleese says.
“We have the new trucks starting to arrive, in fact I think the first truck has been built and the first load of overburden shifted with that. The shovel is currently under construction and is due to be finished, I think it’s the end of December this year, and that will be on time and on budget so far.
“Those two things will make quite a significant difference to our costs in the long run, at the mine at Coppabella.”
