Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp plans to increase production to bring down overall costs in the second half of the year.

Adrian Ramos, Atlas executive vice president, today told reporters that the company will “do much better” in the July to December period with output getting a boost from the expansion of the copper concentrate capacity of wholly-owned unit Carmen Copper Corp.

"We're trying to bring in the expansion plant online as quickly as we can. We should be pulling in better grades on the average as well," Ramos said, adding that the additional unit will come on stream in the fourth quarter of the year.

"Productivity is everything, that's what we control. Copper price, we don't control. The only thing we can do is to be productive as we can," Ramos said.

The expansion will support Carmen Copper in generating a total milling capacity of 60,000 tons per day by next year. The company operates the 1,675-hectare Toledo copper mine in Cebu. In July, Carmen Copper reached a peak milling capacity of 50,000 tons per day, compared to the average 42,000.

"We just tried to [produce] as much copper or metal as we can. We don’t think whether pricing is lower or higher. We will just maximize whatever output we can because that's the only way we can put costs down. Bringing costs down is the name of the game to be efficient in any price scenario," Ramos said.

Atlas' net income dropped 52 percent to P750 million in the first half of the year from P1.55 billion in the same period last year due to unrealized foreign exchange losses on its dollar-denominated debt. Without the extraordinary loss, net income would have hit P1.35 billion.

Lower realized metal prices dragged core income by 11 percent to P1.17 billion in the January to June period from P1.31 billion in the same period last year.

A partnership between the Ramos family and SM group of Henry Sy, Atlas has completed a restructuring program that wiped out its accumulated deficit of P12.7 billion. Last year, it declared its first cash dividend to shareholders amounting to P1 billion.