Peabody Energy have announced it will cut 400 positions across its NSW and QLD coal mine operations, blaming challenging market conditions for the move.
Specific dates were not given for the redundancies, however a spokeswoman told Australian Mining the cuts would affect all of Peabody’s Australian operations.
In a statement Peabody said the ‘reduction had been made to align the company’s workforce size with other cost reduction activities, as part of a comprehensive cost management review’.
Peabody operates three coal mines in New South Wales and eight in Queensland.
Last month the miner announced plans to slash more than 400 contractor positions across its coal mines.
It stated that in an effort to respond to current market conditions "management has been reviewing the use of contractors across many of our mines".
"This has traditionally been an area of high spend for the company and as a result we will be reducing approximately 450 contractor positions at our mines over the coming weeks."
Peabody will announce its quarterly earnings report from the U.S today.
Early this year the company reported US$1 billion in losses for the 4Q12 and a full-year 2012 loss of US$575.1 million.
The world’s largest private sector coal company said it was targeting an adjusted diluted loss per share of $0.26 to $0.04 for the first quarter of this year.
The targets “reflect expectations of higher Australian costs related to the timing of additional overburden removal and startup costs associated with the transition to owner operator; lower realized metallurgical coal pricing; and lower U.S. sales and pricing," Peabody said at the time.