PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Iron-ore miner Atlas Iron on Tuesday flagged further cost savings for 2015, with MD Ken Brinsden saying that the company was demonstrating significant skills and resilience to deal with the volatility in the iron-ore market.

The miner had previously targeted cost savings of between A$75-million and A$100-million for the financial year; however, Brinsden has now widened this estimation to between A$90-million and A$120-million by the end of June.

“We have and will continue to be unrelenting in our focus on reducing costs, with the goal of making us clearly the lowest cost junior iron-ore producer in Australia, while targeting to be among the lowest cost producers globally outside of the big four.”

The Australian icon also lowered its all-in cash cost guidance from the A$67.29/t achieved in the first half of 2015, to between A$60/t and A$63/t, while C1 cash costs were lowered to between A$42/t and A$45/t free-on-board, compared with the A$46.94 achieved in the first half.

“Fantastic cost reductions, productivity improvements and really solid relationships with our contractors are delivering substantial savings to Atlas,” Brinsden said on a conference call on Tuesday.

Despite the significant reduction in iron-ore prices during the half year, Atlas achieved positive cash flow from its operations, with the miner shipping about 6.89-million tonnes of ore during the first half ended December.

However, the declining iron-ore prices resulted in a 23% drop in revenue for the interim period, compared with the previous corresponding period, which reached only A$450.8-million.

On the back of a A$834-million noncash impairment charge, Atlas also reported an after-tax loss of A$1-billion for the half-year, down from a profit of A$73.6-million in the previous corresponding period. Brinsden noted that the impairment charge reflected the assessment of the company’s asset values in light of the changing market conditions.

Looking ahead, Atlas said it expected to ship between 6.8-million and 7.2-million tonnes of product during the second half of the year, as the recently completed Mt Webber mine ramped up to its nameplate capacity of six-million tonnes a year.

Brinsden said that with the completion of mine construction, Atlas had now finished its capital cycle, meaning that further capital spend would be minimal.