Northam Platinum, one of South Africa's major platinum miners, has detailed a sharp decline in headline earnings in its latest results as production levels fell.

The firm, which struggled with a fire at one of its main operations last year, said that its pgm output fell by 18.3 per cent in the first half of the financial year, as 149,481 ounces were produced.

The figure marks a sharp decline from 2003 figures, when more than 183,000 ounces were produced.

Platinum accounted for the lion's share of the output at 62 per cent, but the death of nine miners in September in an underground fire near Thabazimbi cast a shadow over the results.

In a statement Northam expressed its regret at the incident and also detailed the impact it had on production: "Following the suspension of production, mining operations were only resumed towards the end of October 2004, with the resultant loss of approximately six weeks of production.

"This had a significant negative effect on the company's performance during the period under review."

The firm did say, however, that it expected performance to recover from the damaging results, predicting that the second half figures would be broadly in line with results from the same period in the previous year.