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Category: Iron Ore

WA junior miners post losses as iron ore price drops

Wednesday, 24 Feb 2016 11:47:35

Atlas Iron and BC Iron post losses as global iron ore prices continue to plunge. (Stephen Stockwell)

Junior WA iron ore miners have posted losses as the declining price continues to bite.

Miner Atlas Iron has posted an after-tax loss of $114.3 million, including a $43.9 million write-down on the value of its assets.

The result is an improvement from the miner's $1.1 billion loss in the first half of last year.

The West Australian based-miner said it managed to reduce its production costs to $52 a tonne.

The average price the company received for its ore fell by about $11 to just over $59 a tonne.

BC Iron posts net loss

The plunging iron ore price continued to weigh heavily on junior miner BC Iron, which posted a net loss of almost $73.9 million.

The loss was affected by a pre-tax write-down of $40 million in relation to stockpiled ore at its Nullagine Joint Venture project in the north west of Western Australia.

The company received an average price of $US51 a tonne for its ore during the period.

The slumping price forced the miner to suspend production at its Nullagine Joint Venture project in December with the final stockpiled shipment leaving last month.

In a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange, BC Iron managing director Morgan Ball said the company would continue to assess whether it could restart operations at Nullagine in some capacity in the future.

"It was clearly a challenging half-year period for BC Iron," he said.

"The declining iron ore price affected our financial results and ultimately led to the decision to temporarily suspend DSO operations at Nullagine.

"Given the current iron ore market and outlook, this decision was the correct one for our shareholders but disappointing for our employees, contractors and stakeholders."

The company will not pay a dividend to shareholders.

AustraliaPlus


 

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