[miningmx.com] — XSTRATA, the world’s fourth-largest copper miner, expects to benefit from supply troubles hitting the metal globally, it said on Tuesday, as it reported increased resources and said its own key projects were on track and on schedule.
A drastic fall in output at Chile’s Escondida, the world’s largest copper mine and majority owned by global miner BHP Billiton, as well as ongoing strikes at Freeport-McMoRan copper operations and weather disruptions have hit copper output and are set to keep the market in deficit this year.
But Xstrata executives said it expected to increase its market share and benefit from having invested through the 2008 crisis, giving it a head start on equipment ordering, from a portfolio of new projects and from good relations with local governments as a result of continued investment, helping it to keep working.
“We do have an edge… we are one of the few companies that continues to operate in Peru at the moment… In Argentina we operated through some pretty difficult political periods,” Charlie Sartain, head of Xstrata Copper, the company’s largest division, told reporters ahead of an investor presentation.
“Plus, the portfolio of projects and operations that we have enables us to pick the winners, and identify those projects that we think are going to have the best chance of progressing.”
Demand, the company said, was also holding up despite a “slight” softening in China, partly thanks to low stocks and an easing after a liquidity squeeze that has hit smaller Chinese buyers.
“There has been a slight (softening in demand), but we see that in a range and we are not seeing a market shift in sentiment or demand from China,” Sartain told reporters.
“Demand is important but it is a balance, you can’t just turn on copper supply… If you are going to have less strong growth in China, you look at the supply side of things and at the plausibility of some of these projects coming onstream. That is what gives us confidence.”
Xstrata, which listed almost a decade ago, spent billions on acquisitions in an initial frenzied growth period, but has since said it is focusing on organic growth and boosting its deposits.
The miner said earlier on Tuesday that it had increased its resource base at Las Bambas and Corroccohuayco projects in Peru and El Pachon in Argentina.
In 2011, Xstrata copper has boosted contained copper in its mineral resources by 10 percent to 97 million tonnes, an increase the miner says lays the foundation for its target of increasing copper output by more than 50 percent to 1.5 million tonnes per year by the end of 2014.
Coal, another key division for Xstrata, contributing around 27% of core profit, has also seen demand holding up, though coal division head Peter Freyberg cautioned Chinese demand tempered by an early Chinese New Year in 2012 could mean a slight delay to the traditional seasonal boost.
Freyberg said Xstrata’s high-quality coking coal, which is used in steelmaking, earned a premium and demand was holding.
“Even when the market softens there is demand for this coal so the more productive furnaces can be used,” he said.
“When we get out of this little bit of uncertainty that Europe and the rest of the world is causing us, we will see some significant price improvements.”
