The country’s biggest nickel miner on Thursday reported a 7.4-percent drop in the value of nickel ore shipments in 2012, despite record delivery volumes.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, Nickel Asia Corp. (NAC), said that the total volume of nickel ore sold and delivered from its four operating mines reached 11.7 million wet metric tons in 2012, up by 12.5 percent compared to the 10.4 million WMT a year ago.

“This is the highest volume of ore shipment achieved by the group in its history,” NAC added.

Despite an increase in the volume of shipments, NAC said that the total estimated value of nickel ore shipments fell by 7.4 percent to P11.2 billion in 2012, from the P12.1 billion reported in 2011, mainly from the lower realized London Metal Exchange (LME) nickel price.

The realized LME nickel price applicable to 4.7 million WMT of ore shipped in 2012 was at an average of $8.10 per pound of payable nickel. as compared to $10.53/lbs in 2011. The balance of the shipments, which are mainly the low and medium grade variety ore sold to Chinese customers, were sold on the basis of a negotiated price per WMT of ore, which averaged $24.41 per WMT of ore, compared to $24.47 per WMT of ore in 2011.

For 2012, the company’s Rio Tuba mine, which accounted for 48 percent of the total volume, shipped and delivered 2.3 million WMT of saprolite ore and 3.4 million WMT of limonite ore.

Taganito mine, which is the site of the new HPAL nickel processing plant currently under construction, shipped a total of 1.7 million WMT of saprolite ore and 710,000 WMT of limonite ore—about 20 percent of the total volume of nickel ore shipped during the period.

On the other hand, the Hinatuan mine shipped 2.6 million WMT of limonire ore, while Cagdianao mine delivered a total of 290,000 WMT of saprolite ore, and 795,000 WMT of limonite ore. The two mines accounted for 23 percent and 9 percent of the full-year shipments, respectively.

For 2013, NAC has to-date executed contracts with various customers for the delivery of 11.7 million WMT of saprolite and limonite ore, including 3.2 million WMT of limonite ore to be delivered to the Coral Bay processing plant and another 1.8 million WMT of limonite ore to be delivered to the new Taganito nickel processing plant.

The $1.2-billion nickel processing plant of Taganito HPAL in Surigao del Norte is expected to commence operations during the first half of the 2013.

NAC said that they expect the first full-year of operation of the Taganito nickel processing plant in 2014, noting that total ore deliveries to the plant from the adjacent mine is expected to reach 4.5 million WMT.