Anglo American posted a 42% year-on-year increase in copper production in its September quarter as the company's Quellaveco mine in Peru ramped up its output.
This ramp up was offset by the company's Venetia mine transitioning to underground operations, it added. The company only posted year on year gains in copper and manganese production, but saw output fall in nickel, PGMs, diamonds, iron ore and steelmaking coal.
Anglo produced 209,100t of copper for the quarter, 121,600t from Chile and 87,500t from Peru.
Elsewhere, the company produced 9.3t of nickel (down 7% on Q3 2022 levels), 1Moz of PGMs (down 2%), 7.4Mct of diamonds (down 23% on the year), 15.4Mt iron ore (down 4%), 4.4Mt steelmaking coal (down 21%) and 1Mt of manganese ore (up 4%).
2023 production guidance for copper was revised lower - to 830-870,000t, from 840,000-930,000t. This, the company said, was due to unfavourable ore characteristics and an electrical substation fire at Los Bronces, as well as the impact of a geotechnical fault line on El Soldado's production.
Elsewhere, guidance is unchanged.
Prices
The realised price for the year so far, for copper, at $3.87/lb, was 3% higher than the same period last year. Prices increased drastically in Peru year-on-year, where the realised price climbed 13% over the year, to average $3.86/lb, compared to $3.41/lb a year earlier.
For PGMs the basket price decreased 33% when compared to the first nine months of 2022, to $1766/oz.
The nickel realised price slipped by 22% compared to the first nine months of 2022, to USc 8.29
