JAKARTA: Indonesia’s largest coal producer by volume Bumi Resources booked $100.6 million in net income last year, a huge swing up from $2 billion in net losses in 2015, having taken advantage of lower production costs and a higher coal price as well as improved its energy efficiency last year.
“We were able to minimize production costs last year by not drilling too deep [to extract coal] since we had so many reserves already,” Bumi Resources president director Ari Saptari Hudaya told reporters at a press conference on Thursday (23/02). The miner currently has 2.2 billion metric tons of coal reserves and 12.4 billion metric tons of coal resources.
Bumi’s sales volume went up 11 percent to 87.7 million tonnes last year from 79.3 million tonnes in 2015. The thermal coal exporter produced 86 million tonnes of coal last year, up 6.17 percent from 81 million tonnes in 2015
The company expects to sell 96.3 million tonnes of coal in 2017. Despite higher production and sales, Bumi’s revenue fell 42 percent last year to $23.4 million from $40.5 million in 2015 since the company’s average coal selling price went down to $44.8 per tonne from $42.1 per tonne in 2015.
