PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Johannesburg-, London- and Hong Kong-listed mining major Glencore on Friday announced that it would reduce its Australian coal exports by some 15-million tonnes in 2015, to align output with current customer demand.
The decision to decrease coal exports from Australia followed the miner’s move in December of last year, when it implemented production shutdowns across its Australian operations for a three-week period.
The shutdown was undertaken to combat the oversupply of coal to the market, and to reduce the need to push incremental sales into an already weak pricing environment.
Mining operations were restarted in January.
The miner said on Friday that production initiatives would occur at a number of sites to lower coal exports, and would include some underground roster changes, the scaling-back of some openpit mining activities, and the revision to the product portfolio with the objective of tailoring volumes and qualities to better match current demand.
In addition to the direct operational changes, Glencore would also defer some projects to ensure that inventory management and blending were optimised.
The major told shareholders that it would continue to review all of its coal operations in the prevailing economic climate.
Meanwhile, the regulatory approvals for projects would continue to be progressed to provide the company with future optionality, but Glencore noted that all projects would remain subject to final investment approvals.