Mining giant BHP Billiton’s spin-off, South32, has announced it will delay plans to restart operations at its Samancor Manganese joint venture in response to a slide in the price of alloy.
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Mining giant BHP Billiton’s spin-off, South32, has announced it will delay plans to restart operations at its Samancor Manganese joint venture in response to a slide in the price of alloy.
Mining giant BHP Billiton’s spin-off, South32, has announced it will delay plans to restart operations at its Samancor Manganese joint venture in response to a slide in the price of alloy.
In a statement, the company said the decision to delay the restart of three of the four high-carbon ferromanganese furnaces at the South African operation followed a decline in alloy prices of about 20 per cent since the start of the 2015 financial year, and was aligned with its plans to maximise per-share financial performance over volume.
“No permanent employees will be retrenched as a result of this temporary suspension,” the company said.
“Following this decision, the joint venture is engaging with Transnet to secure access to the necessary rail and port capacity required to export additional manganese ore from its South African mining operations; however, export volumes will remain dependent on market conditions.”
South32 also said a review of the fair value of its interest in the joint venture was currently under way.
The company has a 60 per cent stake in the joint venture, with Anglo American owning the remaining 40 per cent.
In August last year, BHP announced it had agreed with Anglo to make certain changes to the joint venture agreement, however it discontinued consolidation of the manganese business and instead retained its 60 per cent holding at fair value.
The joint venture owns operations in both South Africa and Australia, including an open-cut mine in the Northern Territory and a manganese alloy plant in Tasmania.
South32 shares were 1.8 per cent lower to $2.10 per share at 11:30am.
Rank | Company | Revenue | |
---|---|---|---|
th | ![]() | BHP | $85,964.7m |