Norwich Park
BHP won't carry loss-makers: Marius Kloppers
BY: JAMES MASSOLA AND BEN PACKHAM From: The Australian April 12, 2012 4:22PM 68 comments
SHUTTING Queensland's Norwich Park coal mine had been a "terribly difficult" decision but BHP had a policy of not running loss-making operations, the company's chief executive Marius Kloppers said today.
As the miners' union insisted its industrial campaign at Norwich Park mine had not contributed to the closure, Mr Kloppers said the mine had been unviable under current circumstances.
“We have a policy of not operating facilities that lose cash and this is a facility which we said in our February results was in a loss-making position,” he said.
“Taking a decision on something that doesn't make a profit is always a terribly difficult thing.”
Speaking in Canberra ahead of the first meeting of the Prime Minister's business advisory council, the mining boss said economic conditions were difficult for miners at the moment.
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“What is clear that in a number of our commodities we've seen prices come down, particularly in the processing-oriented activities like aluminium, manganese metal, nickel and so on,” he said.
“Combined with high costs (it) is making life difficult for some of our operations.”
The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union said the Norwich Park mine, in Queensland's Bowen Basin, was a marginal operation that had been losing money since last year.
CFMEU energy division general secretary Andrew Vickers said six other mines in the region had been hit with industrial action in the same wages campaign as Norwich Park, but none of those were faced with closure.
“If Norwich Park was exempted from all future industrial action, that still wouldn't change the situation at Norwich Park,” he said.
“The real situation at Norwich Park is what BHP put in its advice to us and has put out publicly.
“It is the lowest quality of coal that BHP mines; they get the lowest price for it in normal times; the market has been softening; the Australian dollar is high and the contracts are written in US dollars; and their pits are still full of water.
“Even if we were at work, we couldn't have produced. And in any event, the mine has been losing money since November of last year, and there wasn't one day of industrial action through the whole of December and January because we called a truce.”