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Showing posts with label NSW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NSW. Show all posts

Friday, March 11, 2011

BlueScope Steel Restructure

Fri,March11, 2011

The Chief Executive of Bluescope's Port Kembla steelworks says they'll know more about the impact of the companies restructure in the coming months.

Noel Cornish announced his retirement as the company revealed its plans to merge its Australian and New Zealand businesses.

Mr Cornish will step down in August and he'll be replaced by Mark Vasella who has been the President of Bluescope North America.

Mr Cornish says he'll remain involved as a member of Bluescopes board of Directors, and he admits there could be redundancies.

"Over the course of the next few months we will get more information about that and of course we will be very open and transparent about it ..let's wait and see what the detail shows and just reflect again that the way bluescope steel goes about these things that we try to have the utmost respect for people as we go through these processes." He said.

Noel Cornish says Labor's proposed carbon price will spell the end of steel manufacturing in Australia.

He says if its adopted in Australia and international competitors don't bear the same cost then Australian manufactured steel will become uncompetitive and imports will outweigh exports.

He says Labor's Carbon policy is fundamentally flawed because there will always be demand for steel.

"Australia will continue to use steel so whether its manufacutured here in australia or manufactured overseas we will still continue to use it so what we'll find is having hollowed out manufacturing in australia we will have no improvement in global greehouse gas emissions" He said.

The AWU's Port Kembla Branch Secretary, Andy Gillespie says Bluescope Steel has already cut jobs too far and production levels will be affected if more jobs go.

"I don't see there's any room for redundancies on the shop floor if the current production remains the same with the current production methods the merger of bluescope's 3 divisions i don't see affecting people on the shop floor it may however affect people higher up." He said.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Xstrata's thermal coal down, but coking up

Reported by AAP
Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Anglo-Swiss mining giant Xstrata has attributed a dip in Australian thermal coal production in 2010 to the Queensland floods and the planned closure of a mine in NSW.
Xstrata, the world's largest exporter of thermal coal, which is used to generate steam for electricity, produced 37.8 million tonnes (Mt) of the commodity in Australia in calendar 2010, down from 41.1 Mt in 2009.

"Australian thermal coal production for 2010, including semi-soft, was 2.9 million tonnes, or six per cent, below 2009 production," Xstrata said late on Tuesday.
The output fall was primarily due to the planned closure of the United underground colliery in NSW and the impact of severe weather during the first quarter and in December on the Queensland open-cut operations.
However, volumes of coking coal - used in blast furnaces in the production of iron - from Xstrata's Australian mines rose substantially to 7.7 Mt, from 6.4 Mt previously.
"Australian coking coal volumes increased by 20 per cent, or 1.3 million tonnes, as a result of a full year of production from Oaky number one (in Queensland) and high productivity from Oaky North," Xstrata said.
That increase would have been greater if not for industrial action at the Tahmoor mine in NSW in the second half of the year, when workers led by the Construction Forestry, Mining and Energy Union went on strike, calling for wage increases.
The company also announced it had completed construction of a magnetite base plant at Ernest Henry mine, in central Queensland, as part of a $589 million undertaking to transform the project into a major underground copper-gold operation.
The plant had produced its first magnetite iron ore concentrate, an important by-product of the copper-gold concentrating process, Xstrata said.

Magnetite output is expected to be at a rate of about 1.2 Mt per annum, with exports expected to start from Townsville port in the first half of this year.
Ernest HenryMining general manager Myles Johnston said the plant would play a major role in extending the life of the project to at least 2024.
"The transformation of open pit mining operations to a major shaft underground mine is on budget with the shaft scheduled to be commissioned in the first quarter of 2013," Mr Johnston said.
Xstrata mined 74,595 tonnes of copper at Ernest Henry in 2010, up from 35,562 tonnes previously.
The mine also yielded 91,259 tonnes of gold, up from 45,227 in 2009.
Xstrata said a four per cent lift in its total global gold production in 2010 was due to a strong recovery in gold production at Ernest Henry.
Xstrata has activated preliminary emergency procedures as powerful Cyclone Yasi hits Queensland, with nickel production suspended from the 30,000 tonnes per year Yabulu nickel refinery.