Vale’s Q2 met coal output down 9%

Vale produced 1.67 million tonnes of metallurgical coal in the second quarter of 2014, the Brazilian miner said on Thursday July 24.

Paragraph entered by Atlantic migration, in order for SteelFirst articles to display correctly on Metal Bulletin.

This volume was down by 9.2% year-on-year, mostly due to the performance of its Moatize and Carborough Downs units, which saw their output decline by 15.9% to 714,000 tonnes and 11.7% to 591,000 tonnes, respectively.

Tthe ramp-up of the first phase at Moatize was being temporarily restricted by rail and port infrastructure limitations, which “do not allow for the total utilisation of the mine’s nominal capacity of 11 million tpy”, Vale said.

The decline at Carborough Downs unit was “due to the geotechnical fault zone reached in May, which required consolidation and recovery of the support equipment. Production was normalised in June,” Vale said.

Output at the Integra Coal project, in New South Wales, Australia, increased by 18.9% year-on-year in the second quarter, to 235,000 tonnes.

Production at Isaac Plains showed an increase of of 6.4% in the same comparison, to 131,000 tonnes.