QR National Ltd, Australia’s largest coal transporter by rail, expects deliveries to be “adversely” affected for at least this month and next after rain and a derailment forced track closures in Queensland.
The wet weather and flooding is “hampering access to the track and hence recovery efforts,” Brisbane-based QR said in a statement yesterday.
Australia had its wettest September-to-November period on record, prompting mining companies including Xstrata PLC and Vale SA to declare force majeure. Force majeure is a legal clause that allows a company to miss deliveries because of circumstances beyond its control. Rio Tinto Group, the world’s third-largest mining company, yesterday also made the declaration.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
“The severe monsoonal rain, on top of the significant rainfalls in November and December, has had an adverse impact on mining operations and has cut access roads and rail networks,” London-based Rio said in a statement to the -Australian stock exchange.
It couldn’t provide a forecast for how much coal sales may be cut, it said.
Xstrata’s Oaky Creek mine reported a spill of mine water on Monday, according to a statement from the Queensland Ministry of Climate Change and Sustainability, while BHP Billiton Ltd, the world’s largest mining company, will report any significant impact on its coal mines in the region in its next quarterly production report, BHP spokeswoman Kelly Quirke said on Tuesday.
QR’s Goonyella rail network, serving Hay Point, about 1,000km north of Brisbane, is closed after the derailment of a Pacific National train on Friday. Services may resume “within the next few days,” QR said.
Rio’s Hail Creek, Blair Athol and Clermont operations in the Bowen Basin are serviced by the Goonyella network, according to QR’s Web site. Rio has declared force majeure at those mines along with the Kestrel operation.
Heavy rain and flooding is -forecast for the “coming days,” QR said.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology says southeastern Queensland and eastern New South Wales have a 60 percent to 70 percent chance of getting higher-than-average rainfalls between next month and March.
Australia accounts for almost two-thirds of the global coking coal trade. The forecast for more rain threatens further gridlock in an industry estimated to earn A$33 billion (US$33.4 billion) in exports next year.
Flooding in October in Queensland contributed to a 2 percent decline in the nation’s coal and other non-farm exports, said Spiros Papadopoulos, a senior economist at National Australia Bank Ltd in Melbourne.
With the latest damage and transportation disruptions, “there is likely to be a larger negative impact on our mining and resource exports in December,” he said.
The damage may cut Australia’s economic output by 0.5 percent, or A$6 billion, as farming and mining exports are curtailed, the Australian newspaper reported today, citing AMP Ltd chief economist Shane Oliver.
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
CRESTING WAVE: Companies are still buying in, but the shivers in the market could be the first signs that the AI wave has peaked and the collapse is upon the world Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported a new monthly record of NT$367.47 billion (US$11.85 billion) in consolidated sales for last month thanks to global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Last month’s figure represented 16.9 percent annual growth, the slowest pace since February last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 11 percent. Cumulative sales in the first 10 months of the year grew 33.8 percent year-on-year to NT$3.13 trillion, a record for the same period in the company’s history. However, the slowing growth in monthly sales last month highlights uncertainty over the sustainability of the AI boom even as
AI BOOST: Next year, the cloud and networking product business is expected to remain a key revenue pillar for the company, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu said Manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted its best third-quarter profit in the company’s history, backed by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Net profit expanded 17 percent annually to NT$57.67 billion (US$1.86 billion) from NT$44.36 billion, the company said. On a quarterly basis, net profit soared 30 percent from NT$44.36 billion, it said. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said earnings per share expanded to NT$4.15 from NT$3.55 a year earlier and NT$3.19 in the second quarter. Gross margin improved to 6.35 percent,
BUST FEARS: While a KMT legislator asked if an AI bubble could affect Taiwan, the DGBAS minister said the sector appears on track to continue growing The local property market has cooled down moderately following a series of credit control measures designed to contain speculation, the central bank said yesterday, while remaining tight-lipped about potential rule relaxations. Lawmakers in a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee voiced concerns to central bank officials that the credit control measures have adversely affected the government’s tax income and small and medium-sized property developers, with limited positive effects. Housing prices have been climbing since 2016, even when the central bank imposed its first set of control measures in 2020, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) said. “Since the second half of
RSS