The Bloom Lake mine, in Quebec, is starting to realise its full potential with production reaching its expanded nameplate capacity of 15-million tonnes a year in the last 30 days, TSX- and ASX-listed Champion Iron reported on Wednesday.
The solid performance of Bloom Lake Phase 2 has helped the company achieve a new quarterly production record of 3.45-million wet metric tonnes of high-grade 66.1% iron concentrate for the three months ended September.
This is a 21% increase compared with the same quarter last year.
The record production was realised despite an unscheduled outage for several days related to a major crusher failure on one of the conveyor belts, affecting the availability of the Phase 2 concentrator.
Champion Iron sold 2.9-million dry metric tonnes (dmt) of iron-ore concentrate in the quarter, up 12% from the previous quarter, as railway capacity gradually resumed after the June forest fires.
Shipments were, however, impacted by the railway service provider’s yearly planned maintenance, which lasted several days, along with an outage caused by a train derailment in the northern switching yard. As a result, the company had 1.6-million wet metric tonnes of iron-ore concentrate stockpiled at Bloom Lake at September 30.
With additional locomotives in service and rail operations resuming at full capacity after the scheduled maintenance in September, the company expects its tonnage sold to meet and possibly exceed tonnage produced as it clears iron-ore concentrate inventories at the mine site in upcoming periods.
Champion Iron reported cost of sales of $37.7/dmt, which is a 9% quarter-on-quarter decrease, positively impacted by semi-annual railway services trailing fuel price adjustments and by higher shipment volumes amortising fixed handling costs at the port.
The company posted revenue of $387.6-million for the three-month period ended September 30, and net income of $65.3-million.