CanAm Coal Corporation has announced coal sales for the second quarter ending June 30th 2012. Q2 2012 coal sales were 76,577 tonnes, a 15% QoQ increase over Q1 but a 6% YoY decrease from the previous year. For the six month period ended June 30th 2012, coal sales were 143,756 tonnes, a 28% YoY increase over the previous year.

The increase in year to date sales can be attributed to a full period contribution from the company's 50% investment in Birmingham Coal & Coke, which closed in May 2011. Second quarter 2012 sales showed improvement over the first quarter despite April and May being negatively impacted by two of the factors that hampered Q1 production; namely, the transitional impact of management and operational changes at the Powhatan mine and an operational incident that damaged an excavator at the Gooden Creek mine.

Additionally, the company carried out a considerable amount of grading and revegetation reclamation work in Q2, which also had an impact on production.

The management and operational changes made at Powhatan, which produces all of CanAm's metallurgical coal began to show positive results in June 2012 where mine production and sales exceeded 12,000 tons, the best month in its history under CanAm ownership. As well, the company has replaced the damaged excavator with another unit and impacted production is returning to normal levels. Overall, June production improved considerably and further, significant improvement for the rest of the year is anticipated.

Mr Jos De Smedt president & COO of CanAm said that "The planned and unplanned events which held back production for the first six months are now behind us. The closing of our acquisition of an additional 30% interest in BCC, which is effective July 1st 2012, the contribution from the planned start up of our new mines and a return to full production at our existing mines positions CanAm for a very strong second half to the year and into 2013."

Source - CanAm Coal Corporation

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