Total iron ore production is expected to increase to between 228 and 237 Mt in the 2017 financial year, excluding production from Samarco.
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The global mining giant said it expects to ship 265 to 275 million tonnes from its Pilbara mines in the current financial year, and to reach a “system capacity” of 290mt in the 2019 financial year.
Copper production in the 12 months ended June fell eight per cent to 1.58 million tonnes, but was ahead of its target of 1.5 million tonnes, helped by a jump at the Olympic Dam operations in South Australia. The final shipment of stockpiles from its Brazilian joint venture, where the catastrophic dam failure killed 19 people and polluted hundreds of miles of rivers in Brazil a year ago, occurred in its final fiscal quarter, it said. BHP Billiton Limited (ADR) has been the topic of 31 analyst reports since July 22, 2015 according to StockzIntelligence Inc.
IG also said that there are more storm clouds on the horizon – including a fight between bond holders of state-owned steelmaker Dongbei Special Steel, which has defaulted on its $US131 million in debt. The Coal segment is engaged in mining of metallurgical coal and thermal (energy) coal.
For FY16, the average realised iron ore price dropped by 30% to $US43 per wet metric tonne free-on-board. That was a record and up 2% on the year prior, but short of an April estimate of 260 million tons that had already been downgraded 4% from a prior forecast.
The world’s biggest miner said annual profit was expected to be hit by charges of up to $US175 million because of write-downs, mainly in the coal business, redundancies as the big miner downsizes and the reversal of stock write-downs, as well as an extra tax bill of between $US150 and $US200 million.
BHP is fighting an $8 billion civil suit in Brazil.
It also said four major projects under development are on target. The dominant statistics will authorize the investment community to govern the size of BHP Billiton plc compared to the sales or total assets figures.
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“Over the next 12 months, we expect volumes and costs across our minerals businesses to benefit from our continued drive to safely improve productivity”, he explained in a statement.
