South African firm Lonmin, the world's third-biggest platinum producer, has confirmed in its latest financial results that annual platinum output fell by 16 per cent.

After cutting its production forecasts three times to 725,000 oz, the company has finally posted total saleable output of 732,125 oz for the year up to 30th September.

The decline was caused by a number of safety stoppages, high levels of absent workers and power supplier Eskom's outage in January, which lasted for four days.

Lonmin has also revealed that it is expecting sales activity for the 2009 fiscal year to be "broadly in line with that achieved in the 2008 financial year".

Alex Shorland-Ball, Vice President of Investor Relations and Communications, said: "The longer term fundamentals of platinum and the other PGMs remain robust but PGM prices have decreased substantially over recent weeks and the short term outlook is more challenging."

The company's full-year results also show that a total of 1,401,371 oz of saleable PGMs were produced, while 12.4 million tonnes of ore were mined during the period.

Lonmin was recently the subject of a proposed takeover by Xstrata, but the bid failed to materialise after the Anglo-Swiss firm failed to formalise it in time to meet a deadline imposed by UK regulations.



Source:

Full Year Production Report 30 October 2008 (30/10/08)
http://www.lonmin.com/assets/pdf/Final%20Q408%20Production%20Report.pdf

Lonmin's Annual Platinum Output Fell 16%, Expects Similar 2009 (30/10/08)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=a7JkTxss_g.8&refer=africa