BHP Billiton announces project delay, shares slip
BHP Billiton announced it would postpone some plans to increase iron ore output, which analysts said signalled the first admission by a major producer of the need to curtail excessive supply growth.
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Nevertheless, the company revealed record levels of iron ore and coal production for the nine months ending 31 March 2015. Western Australia Iron Ore (WAIO) production increased by 16% to a record 188 Mt while metallurgical coal production rose 14% to 38Mt.
The world´s third largest producer of iron ore will delay an Australian prot project which would have led to a 20m tonne increase in output per year by mid-2017.
Output of copper grew by 2% to 1.3m tonnes despite the impact of severe weather in Northern Chile and a mill outage at Olypmic Dam.
In a statement BHP Billiton chief executive officer, Andrew Mackenzie highlighted how the company had managed to lower its WAIO costs to below $20 per tonne.
The shares slipped by 1.14% to $30.25 in Sydney trading.