Mining giant BHP Billiton announced on Sunday a move to cut 380 jobs at its Olympic Dam copper and uranium mine in Australia due to a challenging global business environment and to ensure the sustainability of operations.
The ABC website said the move comes after the BHP Billiton also cut 90 redundancies in its Olympic Dam operations early this year and reduction of 140 staff in its South Australian operations.
Citing a statement from Jacqui McGill, president of the Olympic Dam Asset operation, Reuters reported that the company had to make the move amid challenges in the global resource industry. The report added that the job cuts will reduce the BHP Billiton's workforce in Olympic Dam, which produces copper, uranium and smaller amounts of silver and gold, to 3,500 from 4,000.
Commodity and metal prices have been recently slumping due to the slowdown in the economic activity of China, the biggest consumers of such resources. With China's economy cooling, building activity has slumped as well. This in turn has led to a steep drop in demand and a free fall in the prices of copper, nickel and alumnimum, which have reached six-year lows. Gold prices have also taken a beating, slumping to five year-lows due to sell offs in China.
ABC reported that BHP Billiton is communicating with affected employees and will offer to redeploy some of them in other sites after the completion of an operational review of all sites in mid-September.
The report noted that the company had planned to expand operations of the Olympic Mine after it took over the site in 2005 from WMC Resources. However, BHP Billiton did not push through with the plan due to unfavourable business conditions.
It added that South Australia has seen its unemployment numbers rise this year as the local mining industry scales back operations.
