Photo by: Bloomberg
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Iron-ore major Fortescue Metals has slashed its C1 cash costs during the quarter ended December, prompting the miner to decrease its C1 guidance for the second half of the 2015 financial year.
C1 costs during the December quarter averaged $28.48/oz, a decrease of 11% on the previous quarter, and reflected Fortescue’s continued focus on operational efficiencies across its sites, a lower Australian dollar and lower fuel prices.
The miner said that the full impact of the fall in oil costs and the value of the Australian dollar would flow into the C1 cost during the March quarter, assuming consistency in the market.
As such, Fortescue on Thursday revised its second-half C1 costs to between $25/t and $26/t, resulting in C1 operating costs guidance for the full year reaching between $28/t and $29/t, compared with the previous guidance of between $31/t and $32/t.
Meanwhile, Fortescue has reported that its operations continued to deliver well during the quarter, with some 43.6-million tonnes of ore mined during the period, up 2% on the previous quarter, and some 41.1-million tonnes of ore shipped. This was a slight decline from the 41.5-million tonnes of ore shipped in the first quarter.
The miner noted that managing mining activities and maximising its ore processing facility performances remained a key priority to improving working capital and reducing run-of-mine inventory levels over the remainder of 2015.
For the full year, Fortescue expected to produce and ship between 155-million tonnes and 160-million tonnes of ore.