Impala Platinum hit by safety stoppages

Brendan Ryan | Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:07

[miningmx.com] -- IMPALA Platinum (Implats) lost 33,000 oz of platinum production due to Section 54 safety stoppages during the six months to end- December, which dropped underground mined production by more than 510,000 tonnes of ore.

Despite this, Implats CEO David Brown has been muted in his response to the safety crack-down by the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) that triggered pointed criticism from other platinum producers.

Brown described the situation on the Implats mines as “a difficult operating environment as a result of a high number of Section 54 safety stoppage notices”.

But he added that Implats’s safety performance remained “unsatisfactory” given that six mine workers were killed at Implats’s Rustenburg operations during the six months to end-December.

Three of these fatalities were due to falls of ground, while two were caused by equipment-handling incidents and the most recent resulted from an explosive incident.

Despite the lost production, Brown pointed out that Implats’s “mine to market or managed production was virtually unchanged at 738,000 oz of platinum".

Implats’s overall platinum sales volumes were 4.4% down at 766,000 oz (six months to end-2010 – 801,000 oz) but revenues held up at R15.4bn (R15.3bn), thanks to higher dollar platinum prices and a weaker rand/dollar exchange rate.

Headline earnings increased 67% to 575c a share (345c), but the interim dividend was trimmed to 135c a share (150c).

- The writer owns shares in Impala Platinum.