Miners enjoy better times, but costs starting to hurt - Business - Evening Standard
       

Miners enjoy better times, but costs starting to hurt

The miners are still cashing in on higher commodity prices, but rising energy and labour costs are starting to hurt. That was the message delivered with results from metals behemoths Vedanta Resources and ENRC today.

Vedanta, the India-focused miner which has been under fire for its human rights and environmental record, said "emerging markets with domestic demand remain a silver lining, despite clouds of global economic volatility" but admitted that higher energy and labour costs were hitting the bottom line. Its underlying half-year profit fell more than a third, worse than City expectations, to $186.3 million.

Meanwhile the integrated Kazakh miner ENRC said it would continue to produce either at or near full capacity this year, even though the cost of its key input materials, including coke and diesel fuel, rose.

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