Centennial crashes into the red

摘要

Problems at the Newstan and Tahmoor mines sent New South Wales producer Centennial Coal crashing into the red for the December half, despite substantially higher coal sales and revenue. Centennial incurred a pre-tax loss of almost 30 million Australia dollars (23.4 million dollars) for the half, against an 2.4 million Australia dollars profit in the same half of 2005. But total managed coal sales jumped a healthy 30 percent to 10.6mt and revenue rose 22 percent to 448.9 million Australia dollars. The main catalyst for the loss was an 134.1 million Australia dollars write-down on the planned closure of the Newstan thermal/semi-soft mine, as part of an earlier-announced restructure of the company's mine portfolio.