(Reuters) - Australian miner South32 Ltd <S32.AX> said on Tuesday it expects its Illawarra coal project to produce about 4.5 million tonnes of coal for fiscal 2018, down from 7.1 million tonnes a year ago following a recent outage at its Appin colliery.
The company suspended operations at the Appin coal mine earlier this year on concerns over high gas levels, but was given a regulatory greenlight in August to resume limited operations.
"We expect to return the Appin colliery to its prior two longwall configurations in the December 2018 quarter," the company said in a statement.
The Appin mine in fiscal 2017 accounted for almost half the company's overall production of coal used in steelmaking.
South32 said it expects capital expenditure in fiscal 2018 of about $470 million, below its previous forecast of $500 million due to deferred development at Appin.
It also reaffirmed its production guidance for all of its operations in fiscal 2018.
Shares of the miner rose about 2.2 percent following the announcement, compared to a 0.6 percent drop in the Australian benchmark <.AXJO>.
(Reporting by Ambar Warrick in Bengaluru; editing by Richard Pullin)
