Xinjiang Xinxin Mining Industry, the mainland’s second-largest producer of nickel used in stainless steel production, says it expects to have returned to the black last year and to report a 300 per cent jump in revenue.
The bottom-line improvement was due to higher nickel prices, sales volume and lower production costs, while revenue was also boosted by the commissioning of a copper project in the middle of last year, the Xinjiang-based firm said in a filing to Hong Kong’s stock exchange.
In 2013, it had revenue of 844.9 million yuan and a net loss of 58.5 million yuan. Revenue was 1.53 billion yuan in 2012.
The firm said it had a “significant increase” in the sales volume of its mainstay product, nickel cathode, from 4,182 tonnes in 2013. The product accounted for 51.2 per cent of total revenue in that year, compared to 46.5 per cent contributed by copper cathode.
The average three-month forward price of nickel traded on the London Metals Exchange rose 12.2 per cent to US$16,923.4 a tonne last year.
The firm’s Wuxin copper project, with 100,000 tonnes of annual output capacity, went into trial production in June.