SHANGHAI, Aug. 20 (SMM) - Western Mining reported rising gross margins from zinc products in the first half of 2015 from rising zinc prices, SMM learned.

The company’s gross margins from zinc products rose 6.09 percentage points to 22.62% in H1, but its profit fell 64.64% year-on-year to 41.63 million yuan.

Rising zinc and zinc concentrate prices are believed to be the contributing factor to the growth in the company’s profit, said SMM. The average SMM #0 zinc price in H1 was 16,271.43 yuan per tonne, up 8% year-on-year. The average SMM zinc concentrate price was 10,535 yuan per tonne during the same period, up 6.7% year-on-year.

Notably, the company failed to meet its mid-year target as to zinc ingot and zinc concentrate, allowing its business income from zinc products to fall 4.67% year-on-year to 460 million yuan. It only produced 85% of its mid-year zinc ingot output target due to the maintenance at its subsidiary. Its Xinyuan Mining also suffered from power and water supply shortages, so the parent company only produced 26,301 tonnes, or 96.93% of its zinc concentrate target for H1.

Western Mining’s lead, zinc and copper business accounts for 26%, 29% and 44%, respectively, in the total.

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