South Africa's Amplats says Q1 output slides on safety stoppages

JOHANNESBURG, April 21 (Reuters) - South Africa's Anglo American Platinum said on Thursday refined production for its first quarter halved compared with the same period a year ago mainly due to safety stoppages, and warned the slump would impact first-half profits.

Production was stopped for 12 days and this in turn affected output for 37 days at the company's refinery, the unit of global miner Anglo American (LSE: AAL.L - news) said in a statement.

Combined with a planned stock take, the stoppages led to a 52 percent slump in refined platinum production to 261,000 ounces for the three months to end-March, Amplats said.

Shares (Berlin: DI6.BE - news) were trading 1.78 percent lower at 409.62 rand by 1035 GMT.

Mines are mandated by the government to stop production after a death or an injury to allow time for safety investigations and inspections.

The industry has at times complained that the drive to a goal of "zero harm," was overzealous, with frequent safety stoppages resulting in output and revenue losses.

Amplats, the world's largest platinum miner, said production lost will be made up in the next two quarters and cautioned that this would have a short term impact on the company's financial position in the first half of 2016.

Despite this, Amplats kept its full-year guidance unchanged at between 2.3 to 2.4 million tonnes. (Reporting by Zandi Shabalala; Editing by James Macharia)