Banpu's 5-yr expenditure
Banpu, Thailand's largest coal miner, has revised upwards its capital-expenditure forecast for 2011-15 to US$1.75 billion (Bt53 billion) from $670 million, mainly on new investments in Australia's Centennial Coal and in Mongolia.
The company’s previous five-year plan did not include the operations in Australia and Mongolia, new coal mines that Banpu acquired in 2011, chief executive officer Chanin Vongkusolkit said yesterday. The bulk of the investment-budget increase is for coal-mine development in those two countries and Indonesia.
Chanin said the company had set aside $600 million for the production in Australia, of which $400 million was targeted to increase production capacity to 4.3 million tonnes by 2014. The budget for developing coal mines in Mongolia is $400 million.
He said the investment budget for Indonesia, Thailand, Laos and China had been increased to $750 million from $466 million. The new investment budget in Indonesia will be $372 million. Operations in Thailand and in Laos – where the company is constructing the Hongsa power plant project – will require investment of $343 million until 2015, while the investment in China is worth $35 million.
Banpu’s coal-production volume by 2015 will be 60 million tonnes – 30 million tonnes from Indonesia, 20 million from Australia and 5 million each from China and Mongolia, he added.
Chanin said the company targeted coal-production volume this year of 47.7 million tonnes from the operations in Indonesia, Australia, China and Mongolia. Of this, 27 million tonnes will come from mines in Indonesia, 16.7 million tonnes from Australia, 3 million tonnes from China, and 1 million tonnes from Mongolia.
Contracts have already been secured for 87 per cent of the targeted coal production in Indonesia. Of these, 51 per cent have been priced already, 31 per cent are floated in accordance with the price index at delivery, and 6 per cent is unpriced. Contracts are secured for about 72 per cent of targeted production in Australia’s Centennial Coal. Of these, 36 per cent already have fixed selling prices, 20 per cent depend on the index price, and 16 per cent is unpriced.
“We aim for revenue growth of 15 per cent to Bt130 billion in 2012,” he said.
Chanin said the company this year would gradually increase the proportion of exports to total coal production at Centennial. In 2011, the export proportion rose to 39 per cent from 34 per cent in 2010. In terms of sales revenue, exports contributed 60 per cent of total sales, rising from 50 per cent in 2010.
