* Safety stops now involve entire shafts, mines
* Headline earnings down almost 30 pct as expected
(Adds details, background)
JOHANNESBURG, FEB 13 – Anglo American Platinum
, the world’s largest producer of the precious metal,
said on Monday that output would likely be flat in 2012 after it
fell short of its target last year due to a spike in safety
stops.
The group said as it announced 2011 earnings that it planned
to refine and sell between 2.5 million and 2.6 million ounces of
platinum in 2012. Amplats, a unit of Anglo American,
accounts for close to 40 percent of global platinum supply.
Last year it initially targeted 2.7 million ounces but sold
2.6 million and produced a bit less that that, as a government
drive to stem the death toll in the country’s mines forced it to
halt production 81 times for safety reasons, over double the
2010 figure.
“While we agree with the need for the regulator to stop
operations for non-compliance, the key issue is the nature of
stoppages and their effectiveness in addressing real risks,” the
company said in a statement.
The miner said safety stops now involved entire shafts or
mines instead of just a single operation, adding its voice to a
growing chorus of complaints from the industry that the current
push on safety is overzealous.
The death toll in South Africa’s mines has dropped
dramatically from the levels of the apartheid era, but on
average over 10 workers are still losing their lives each month
underground.
Headlines earnings per share, the main guage of earnings in
South Africa, fell almost 30 percent as expected to 1,365 cents.
The group had already flagged to the market that it expected
to earnings to fall by close to a third because of costs related
to a black economic empowerment deal.
South African miners have government-mandated targets to be
at least 26 percent black-owned by 2014 as part of a policy to
rectify racial disparities left over from apartheid.
(Reporting by Ed Stoddard and Agnieszka Flak, editing by David
Dolan)
