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Anglo American announces the successful commissioning of the third of its four major growth projects during 2011, delivering on the company’s strategic plan to drive substantial organic volume growth from approved projects across its copper (+43%), nickel (+180%) and iron ore (+80%) businesses.
The commissioning of Kolomela – a new 9 Mtpa iron ore mine in South Africa’s Northern Cape – follows the delivery of the 36,000 tpa Barro Alto nickel project in Brazil in March 2011 and the expansion to double production from the Los Bronces copper mine in Chile in November 2011. Kolomela has been commissioned five months ahead of schedule, on budget and has shipped its first product from the port of Saldanha to customers in China. Chris Griffith, CEO of Anglo American’s Kumba Iron Ore business, said: “The first shipment of 100,000 tons of Kolomela lump ore left the port of Saldanha on 19 December 2011 on its journey to the port of Qingdao in China, from where it will be sold to Kumba’s existing customers. This shipment is a significant milestone towards achieving the production ramp-up schedule of 4-5 million tonnes in 2012 and the expectation of reaching full production of 9 Mtpa in 2013. The commissioning of the Kolomela project is in line with our growth strategy of ramping our South African production up to 70 Mtpa by 2019.” Cynthia Carroll, Chief Executive of Anglo American, said: “The commissioning of Kolomela five months ahead of schedule is a remarkable achievement and caps a year of successful major project delivery for Anglo American. Three of our four major projects are now ramping up to produce significant near term volume growth at highly competitive operating costs and capital intensity ratios. Our focus now is on achieving safe and reliable nameplate capacities across these three new operations, on continuing to progress our Minas-Rio iron ore project in Brazil – which with Kolomela and Sishen will enable us to present customers with product optionality from different geographies – and on advancing our other approved and pre-approval projects, such as Grosvenor in Australia and Quellaveco in Peru.” The fourth and largest of Anglo American’s major projects – Minas-Rio – has made very significant progress. Minas-Rio has secured a number of major licences and permits during the year; the offshore and onshore works at the port are on schedule; more than 90% of land access has been secured along the 525km pipeline route and almost 200km of pipe has been installed; and the civil works at the beneficiation plant are well under way. As with other complex greenfield mining projects, a number of irregular issues, such as the discovery of caves at the beneficiation plant site which require specialised assessment, continue to cause delays to the work scheduling, in addition to outstanding land access and an evolving permitting environment. Anglo American is reviewing the budgetary impact, is taking appropriate cost mitigation measures and expects to contain the capital increase to approximately 15% of current capital expenditure guidance in what is a high inflationary environment in the Brazilian mining industry. First ore on ship is unchanged and targeted for the second half of 2013. |
