2008 round up

Where FMG are at so far, good read below from the Australian today, given the twist the worlds got itself into its not a bad outcome for the old FMG.

Port statistics also showed the miner would not reach its December production rate target of 45 million tonnes a year, though it was on track to meet its shipping goals.


Fortescue, run by billionaire miner Andrew Forrest, said its infrastructure could now handle production of 55 million tonnes a year, a rate the miner said last month that it planned to be at in the second quarter.


Announcing the new berth just before Christmas, Fortescue indicated that target had slipped.
``The full operation to 55 million tonnes per annum is expected to be progressively built up over 2009 to reach a steady-state operation,'' it said.


As recently as October, Fortescue had been planning to ramp production up to 80 million tonnes a year by the end of 2009, but it has since moved that target to some time during 2009-10.
Fortescue indicated production, rather than demand, issues were the cause of the delayed ramp-up to 55 million tonnes.


``The new head of mine, port and rail operations, Paul Hallam, is now leading the fine tuning of the operational organisation and systems to match the installed infrastructure rate of 55 million tonnes,'' the company said.


The iron ore market has been turned on its head in recent months as Chinese steel production has plunged and spot prices have fallen well below annual contracts set earlier in the year.


While bigger producers BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have cut back sales, Fortescue has maintained that its customers are keen for its ore. Despite the further pull-back in growth plans, Perth-based Fortescue looks on track to meet recently lowered 2008 export targets.


Port statistics show Fortescue should hit its target of shipping 15million to 16 million tonnes of iron ore this year if it can load the ships expected to arrive in the last week of the year.
Fortescue had been targeting a mined production of 20 million to 22 million tonnes this year but revised that in late November to the current shipping target.


By Christmas Eve, Fortescue had loaded 11 ships with its own ore, had two at berth and five expected in the last week of December.


That puts it in on track to beat its monthly record of 2.5 million tonnes from 15 ships, achieved in July and September.


Assuming an average of 170,000 tonnes of iron ore per ship and that all are loaded with the miner's boosted capacity, Fortescue is on track for record exports of about 3 million tonnes in December, and total exports of 15.2 million tonnes.


Monthly production of 3 million tonnes translates to an annual rate of 36 million tonnes a year, still 9 million tonnes shy of a rate of 45 million tonnes a year.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,24844940-36418,00.html