BHP moves to stanch the bleeding

摘要

The world's biggest mining company has joined the lengthy list of majors to close operations and trim payrolls in the face of sagging metal prices. BHP Billiton (BHP-N, BLT-L, BHP-A) is suspending operations at its nascent Ravensthorpe nickel operation, reducing capacity at its Yabulu processing facility, and slashing 6,000 jobs. BHP finished building Ravensthorpe in 2007, spending more than 2 billion US dollars on the mine, and had only just achieved full capacity in the second half of 2008. Now the still-new operation in Western Australia will sit idle while the major waits for nickel prices to recover.