Rio Tinto Group
Rio Tinto Group
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It avoided the physical damage that its neighbour and rival Rio Tinto sustained, but BHP Iron Ore has locked in a 3.5% loss of production and over 6.5% increase in unit costs for the year to end-June due to localised flooding and the processing of wet material due to tropical cyclone Veronica hitting its Pilbara port and rail network in Western Australia last month.
With additional impacts, Rio Tinto lowered its FY2019 guidance by under 2%.
Rio Tinto has trimmed its FY2019 iron ore export forecast by nearly 2% due to the impact on March qtr (Q1) shipments from its Pilbara system in Western Australia due largely to the impact of cyclone Veronica last month and a fire at its Cape Lambert shipping facility in Jan.
The world No 2 iron ore producer expects full year shipments to be 333-343Mt, down from its prior guidance of 338-350Mt.
Q1 shipments fell to 69.1Mt, from 87.4Mt in Q4FY2018. The first qtr events are also expected to impact June qtr iron ore results.
Rio Tinto sticks with engineer WorleyParsons as EPCM contractor with the target of developing the world’s first ‘intelligent mine’ at its 43Mtpa Koodaideri project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. John Feary reports
Rio Tinto has awarded the engineering, procurement and construction management contract for its $US2.6B Koodaideri iron ore production hub in Western Australia’s Pilbara region to WorleyParsons.
The major contract award follows the completion of Koodaideri’s detailed engineering study, with extensive work by WorleyParsons on the use of “intelligent mine” technology.
The contractor says it will use data-centric engineering processes to also produce a digital asset for Rio Tinto.
Global miner Rio Tinto has underlined its commitment to bringing the giant Resolution copper project in Arizona, USA to production with approval of an additional $US302M investment for drilling, studies, infrastructure and permitting.
Rio Tinto holds 55% of Resolution, with BHP holding the remaining 45%. The latest commitment lifts total investment by the JV partners to over $2B since 2014.
Mining major Rio Tinto has approved the next $US463M (Rio share $343M) stage development of Richards Bay Minerals (RBM) in South Africa through the construction of the Zulti South mineral sands project, with construction scheduled to start in mid-2019 for 1st commercial production in late 2021.
Australian explorer Antipa Minerals has raised $A5.1M to accelerate regional exploration of WA’s exciting Paterson Province through the placement of 268.8M shares at $0.019ps that has attracted a number of new domestic and international investors.
Antipa says the issue, at a 20.8% discount to its last close, was also well supported by major shareholders.
Some unspecified damage to Rio Tinto’s Cape Lambert A iron ore operations in Western Australia’s northern Pilbara region, caused by the recent Tropical Cyclone Veronica and a January 2019 fire, have cost the miner 14Mt of production in 2019 forcing the company to declare force majeure on certain contracts.
Rio says operations are progressively resuming, but it now expects Pilbara shipments in 2019 to be at the lower end of previous guidance of 338Mt-350Mt on a 100% basis.
Rio Tinto has declared force majeure on some iron ore shipments from its Pilbara system in Western Australia due to damage caused to shiploading infrastructure at its Cape Lambert A terminal by tropical cyclone Veronica.
The company has not disclosed details of the damage or the likely duration of the interruption to exports.
The big N Western Australia Pilbara iron ore export hubs are re-opening, with Ports of Port Hedland and Ashburton back in business following infrastructure assessments after closures for 93-hours and 110-hours respectively.
The Pilbara Ports Authority says there was no significant infrastructure damage at any of the Ports and operations will return to normal over the next 24-hours. The Port of Dampier is currently undertaking post cyclone impact assessment.