Lonmin, the world's third-largest platinum producer, has reported fall in production following strike action and safety stoppages.

Underground operations at its Marikana mine produced 2.4 million tonnes during the third quarter of the 2011 financial year, a decrease of 8.1 per cent from Q3 2010.

The firm's Karee operations saw a reduction of 7.2 per cent over the same period, due to the unprotected industrial action that resulted in a loss of 258,000 ts of production.

Production at Westerns, Middelkraal and Easterns combined decreased by 8.5 per cent.

This was down to the "challenging" ground conditions, while mechanical breakdowns at Saffy and Hossy persisted and the planned decline at Newman continued.

Section 54 shut downs caused 132,000 ts in lost production during the quarter, while management-induced safety stoppages resulted in 44,000 ts of lost production.

Meanwhile, Lonmin said production at its Merensky opencast operations increased by 53.1 per cent from Q3 2010.

Overall, 2.5 million tonnes were mined, reflecting a decrease of 168,000 ts, or 6.2 per cent.

Refined production for the third quarter was up 81.4 per cent at 166,832 platinum ounces year-on-year.

Lonmin explained that this was due to the outage of the Number One Furnace a year ago.

For the first nine months of the 2011 financial year, Lonmin said it mined 8.4 million tonnes, an increase of 0.5 million tonnes or 6.3 per cent year-on-year.

Total refined production in the nine-month period was 483,665 platinum ounces and 982,387 platinum group metal ounces, an increase of 26 per cent and 25.7 per cent respectively.

"Since the resumption of normal operations at Karee we have made steady progress giving us confidence that absent further safety stoppages and external strike actions impacting our operations we will achieve our adjusted full-year guidance of sales of around 720,000 platinum ounces for the current financial year," Lonmin said in a statement.

Source:



UPDATE 2-Lonmin details higher production costs after strike (21/07/11) 

© Adfero Ltd