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Anglo reinstates dividend, but near-term outlook ‘more uncertain' (Fri, 30 Jul 2010)
Diversified miner Anglo American on Friday announced the reinstatement of a dividend on the back of a strong $4,4-billion half-year operating profit, but cautioned about the near-term outlook for the world economy becoming "more uncertain in recent months". Anglo CEO Cynthia Carroll said that the company had delivered on safety, operational performance, near-term growth and the sale of noncore businesses. While safety was 70% better than in 2007, eight people lost their lives in the six months.
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Anglo still talking to Eskom on power plant possibility – Carroll (Fri, 30 Jul 2010)
Diversified miner Anglo American was continuing its power discussions with South Africa's State utility, Eskom, on the possibility of a power plant being built that would make use of Anglo's discard coal. Anglo Thermal Coal has large volumes of discard coal, much of it buried under rehabilitated dumps.
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Global iron-ore production falls 6,2% in 2009 - Unctad report (Fri, 30 Jul 2010)
The latest report released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) on Friday found that world production of iron-ore fell by 6,2% in 2009 to 1,59-billion tons, while demand, driven by Asian giant China, increased. The report, dubbed 'Iron-Ore Market 2009 to 2011', showed that output of the commodity decreased in most producing countries, except for the two southern cousins, South Africa and Australia.
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Sylvania granted water licence for new Lannex tailings dam (Fri, 30 Jul 2010)
Aim- and ASX-listed Sylvania Resources would now start construction of its new Lannex tailings dam, after being granted the required water licence, it reported on Friday. “The delays experienced in obtaining the permissions necessary for the construction of the new tailings dam seriously delayed Sylvania being able to exploit the full potential and capacity of its biggest plant and had a significant impact on the ounces produced by the group during the second quarter of 2010,” said Sylvania MD Terry McConnachie.
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SA mining health compensation seen as complex, overlapping (Fri, 30 Jul 2010)
Besides having significant monetary and safety challenges, the mining industry is also faced with the challenge of regulated health compensation issues. Compensation anomalies relating to health issues, such as silicosis and noise-induced hearing loss, are still a cause for concern for the mining industry.
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Union threatens to down tools at De Beers’ SA operations (Fri, 30 Jul 2010)
South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), on Friday threatened to embark on industrial action across all local operations of diamond giant De Beers. This comes after the miner served workers with section 189 notices to inform them that 350 jobs at the Finsch mine, in the Northern Cape, would be shed. The union claimed that the company wanted to retrench workers without adhering to due processes. The NUM representative Tshimane Montoedi alleged that the diamond miner had refused to adhere to a training-layoff scheme agreed to earlier and a social labour plan in line with South Africa's Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act.
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Chinese urbanisation still hurtling along (Fri, 30 Jul 2010)
While mining companies were reporting massive profit hikes for the first half of 2010 this week, two noteworthy – and partly related - pieces of information emerged out of China. Firstly, the government quietly claimed that China has toppled Japan as the world’s second biggest economy.
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Vedanta’s Konkola copper mine reports lower Q1 output (Fri, 30 Jul 2010)
London-listed Vedanta Resources said on Friday that first-quarter integrated copper production at its Konkola Copper Mines declined by 11%, after a national power grid failure in Zambia. Production dropped to 34 000 t in the quarter ended June 30. However the mined metal production increased by 26% to 24 000 t and the company was able to produce almost 28% more copper cathodes at 55 000 t, compared with the corresponding quarter.
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