Glencore to cut jobs at Australia's Hail Creek coal mine

(Reuters) - Glencore Plc <GLEN.L> said it would cut about 30 percent of its workforce at its Hail Creek coal mine in Australia, following a review of its operations.

The mine's workforce will be reduced to 930 from 1360, said Glencore, which bought the mine from Rio Tinto <RIO.AX> <RIO.L> in March.

The miner, which began operational management of Hail Creek from Aug. 1, said it would introduce a seven days on, seven days off roster system, meaning that employees at the mine would work 7 days and take the next 7 days off.

The company also said it would reconfigure the mining methods it uses at Hail Creek and expects the process to be phased in over the next 18 months, with majority of the changes expected to be in place by the second quarter of 2019.

Glencore is already the world's biggest exporter of thermal coal used for power stations, and the Hail Creek acquisition gave it a bigger stake in metallurgical coal used for steelmaking.

In 2017, the mine produced about 9.4 million tonnes of hard coking and thermal coal for export.

(Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely and Louise Heavens)