BHP Billiton announces project delay, shares slip

BHP Billiton announced it would postpone some plans to increase iron ore output, which analysts said signalled the first admission by a major producer of the need to curtail excessive supply growth.

Nevertheless, the company revealed record levels of iron ore and coal production for the nine months ending 31 March 2015. Western Australia Iron Ore (WAIO) production increased by 16% to a record 188 Mt while metallurgical coal production rose 14% to 38Mt.

The world´s third largest producer of iron ore will delay an Australian prot project which would have led to a 20m tonne increase in output per year by mid-2017.

Output of copper grew by 2% to 1.3m tonnes despite the impact of severe weather in Northern Chile and a mill outage at Olypmic Dam.

In a statement BHP Billiton chief executive officer, Andrew Mackenzie highlighted how the company had managed to lower its WAIO costs to below $20 per tonne.

The shares slipped by 1.14% to $30.25 in Sydney trading.