plant production is doing well, page-6

just found this article about mre, a few days old news but confirmed the out put production.......


PERTH, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Shares in outback Australian nickel miners may have fallen sharply on concerns of a global supply glut, but the miners show no sign of cutting back production, confident the fall in nickel prices will be temporary.
Nickel miners were encouraged to dig deeper and faster last year as demand for the metal soared, driven mainly by China's construction boom, but prices MNI3 have fallen more than 20 percent since July to just under $12,000 a tonne.

Sales have been led by speculators on the London Metal Exchange (LME), who have turned bearish on demand prospects for the metal, which is used mainly as a toughening additive in stainless steel.

LME-held nickel stocks have ballooned to more than 20,000 tonnes from as low as 4,926 tonnes in the last year.

Cuts in steel making and higher nickel production are likely to combine to drive stockpiles even higher and prices lower, according to Commonwealth Bank of Australia commodities strategist David Thurtell.

Still, the push to mine more nickel, led by Minara Resources Ltd. (ASX: MRE.ax) , LionOre Mining LIM.TO(ASX: LIM.ax) and Sally Malay Mining ((ASX: SMY.ax) was showing no sign of abating.

Minara Chief Executive Peter Johnson said nickel's fall was responsible for cutting the price of his company's shares by more than 20 percent since June 30 to A$1.62.

"Any fall in the nickel price has an effect on your revenue. But it's still at reasonable historic levels that we can live with," Johnson said, adding he expected strong demand from China to continue, helping the market firm up next year.

Johnson said the downturn came just as Minara, which churns out around 36,000 tonnes of nickel a year from its Murrin Murrin mine 700 km (434 miles) east of the far western Australian coast, was close to fixing nagging technical problems that have curtailed output