Dec 5 (Reuters) - Australian miner South32 Ltd S32.AX said on Tuesday it expects its Illawarra coal project to produce about 4.5 million tonnes of coal for fiscal 2018, down from 7.1 million tonnes a year ago, with production to be weighted to the second half of the year following the recent outage at the Appin colliery.
"We expect to return the Appin colliery to its prior two longwall configurations in the December 2018 quarter," the company said in a statement.
The company also said it expects capital expenditure to be about $470 million in fiscal 2018, lesser than its previous forecast of $500 million due to deferred development at Appin.