MELBOURNE, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Australian miner South32 Ltd S32.AX , the world's biggest producer of manganese, said on Thursday it more than doubled its cash on hand in the September quarter due to a cost cutting drive and as commodities prices recovered.
"Stronger commodity prices and cost saving initiatives delivered a further $239 million increase in our net cash position to $551 million," chief executive Graeme Kerr said.
South32 logged a 76 percent drop in annual underlying profit for the last financial year, its first full year since it was spun out of BHP Billiton (LON:BLT), partly due to slumping commodities prices. miner revised up its share of thermal coal output at Illawarra Metallurgical Coal for the 2017 financial year to 1.450 million tonnes and cut its annual output forecast for metallurgical coal to 7.550 million tonnes.
In the September quarter, metallurgical coal output at Illawarra Met Coal fell 32 percent to 1.437 million tonnes on the previous quarter due to challenging ground conditions. Production was down by 31 percent on a year ago.
It now expects sales from Illawarra of 9.3 million tonnes for the financial 2017 year.
It has also agreed with Alcoa (NYSE:AA)'s Australia unit to explore near Worsely Alumina to boost its bauxite reserves.
Among other metals, quarterly alumina production was little changed from the prior quarter at 1.293 million tonnes, and its share of nickel production fell to 8,700 tonnes from 9,600 tonnes. Manganese ore production slipped by 4 percent on the quarter before to 1.180 million tonnes.
South32 said last week it will begin extraction of ferronickel ore at a site close to its Cerro Matoso mine in northern Colombia to boost annual production by 5,000 tons by 2020.