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Vale said the mine closure was due to a combination of lower Australian dollar sales prices, continuing low yields and high fixed to variable cost ratios relative to volumes.
Forty employees and “a similar number” of contractors will go as a result.
While the small open cut operation is on the way out, Vale aims to ramp up Carborough Downs to a 4.9 million tonnes per annum operation.
Both Carborough Downs and the nearby Broadlea operation produced a total of 450,000 tonnes of coal in the September quarter, a 30% improvement on the June quarter.
Metallurgical coal production from Carborough Downs was 127,000t in the September quarter, while Broadlea produced 114,000t along with 209,000t of thermal coal.
