SMM4, 24 Feb: recently, South32 released its financial report for the first quarter of 2019. Graham Kerr, chief executive of South32, said that as a result of our response to favorable market conditions, our annual ore production at the manganese mine in Australia has so far recorded a record. And we have added production guidance to our manganese mining business in fiscal year 2019. At Worsley Alumina, we reduced our production guidance for fiscal 2019 as we focused on improving calciner performance to continuously achieve nameplate capacity.

The marketable ore production of the manganese industry in South Africa decreased by 3 per cent (or 53 kilotons) to 1615 kilotons (wet tons) in the nine months to March 2019, as the increase in quality materials was offset by a decrease in fine-grain secondary materials. Although we will continue to monitor market conditions, we now expect FY19 production to be 2130 kilotons (wet tons) (the previous guidance was 250 kilotons) (wet tons), because we optimized the use of high-cost trucking with current strong demand. In the nine months ended March 2019, salable production of manganese alloys decreased by 18 per cent (or 10 kilotons) to 47 kilotons.