“The ongoing macroeconomic uncertainties in Europe as well as the slowdown in Asia have affected business sentiment, and this has had a knock-on impact on steel markets and associated raw materials including coking coal,” said Executive Chairman Gareth Penny. “2012 has been a tough year for NWR. In the coking coal business, continued pricing pressure during the year led to a 30% decline in the price of coking coal year-on-year. However, our sustained efforts on cost control delivered our guided mining unit costs for 2012, which remained broadly flat on the previous year, and partially mitigated the difficult pricing conditions.”
Penny added that the company coking coal prices continue to improve during 2013 after a slight uptick in the first quarter, as significant volumes of less competitive global coking coal supply went offline in 2012, and projects that would have brought new supply on stream in the long-term are either delayed or abandoned.
