April 22 (Reuters) – South32 on Wednesday cut its full‑year forecast for Australia manganese after wet‑season rainfall and Tropical Cyclone Narelle disrupted operations, even as third‑quarter output rose on stronger contributions from the unit.
In March, Narelle had forced the company to temporarily halt operations at its Gemco manganese mine in the Northern Territory and evacuate non-essential personnel from the site.
The diversified miner now expects fiscal 2026 production guidance for the unit to come in at 3 million wet metric tons (wmt), down over 6% from the previously announced guidance.
For the March quarter, Australia Manganese produced 589,000 wmt, compared to no output in the same period a year earlier, when the primary concentrator was paused after stockpiles were built ahead of the wet season.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s manganese production was 500,000 wmt, up from 476,000 wmt recorded for the prior-year, even as the operation faced scheduled maintenance activities during the quarter.
The combined manganese output from its Australian and South African operations was 1.09 million wmt in the March quarter, up from 476,000 wmt a year earlier but missing the Visible Alpha consensus estimate of 1.25 million wmt.
(Reporting by Kumar Tanishk in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
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