Australian Gold Output Drops Due to Weather

Gold output in Australia, the world’s second-biggest producer, fell in the first quarter after a key mining region was inundated by heavy rainfall, industry consultant Surbiton Associates Pty said.

Production was 68 metric tons in the three months through March, about 7 percent less than in the fourth quarter of 2013, Melbourne-based Surbiton said in a statement. Output was 8 percent higher than in the same period a year earlier, it said.

A tropical low brought heavy rain to the Goldfields region of Western Australia in mid-February, inundating Regis Resources Ltd. (RRL)’s Duketon site with about 165 millimeters of rain and submerging its Garden Well mine under about 4.7 million cubic meters of water. Full mining may resume in June, the Perth-based producer said last month in a statement.

“As well as mining and haulage problems, wet, sticky ore affects crushers and conveyor belts,” Sandra Close, a director at Surbiton, said in the statement. “Heavy rain can also restrict the supply of diesel and other consumables to remote mine sites.”

via Bloomberg

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza