AngloAmerican is Australia's ­second-biggest producer of metallurgical coal, and last week announced it was putting its Peace River coalmine in British Columbia, Canada, on care and maintenance, citing poor prices for the commodity.

Mr Cutifani expected other pro­ducers around the globe, including in Australia, to follow suit, saying: "I suspect others will have to do fairly similar moves to keep themselves whole."

Hard coking coal spot prices have fallen to about $US115 a tonne from well over $US300 in the heady days of 2011.

The market is in oversupply and Mr Cutifani said: "If the price is not north of $US150, you've got stress right across the industry.

"We've been seeing some pro­duction come out of the market, 20 to 30 million tonnes.

"We've dropped another 2.5 million tonnes out of the met coal market with the closure of Peace River. I think you are going to continue to see some of those announcements, maybe once every two or three weeks.

"It won't make much of a difference this side of the year end, but as we go into next year, I am hoping it will start to make a difference."

He said more than 50 million tonnes would need to disappear from the ­global market "to have any sort of meaning".

"I think everybody is doing it tough in met coal, even the markets and our customers are saying there needs to be a higher met coal price, but people keep throwing volume into the market.

"So, at the end of the day, until production that is not making money starts to be turned off, prices will remain tight." Peace River is AngloAmerican's only met coal operation outside ­Australia, where it has six mines, mainly in Queensland.

Mr Cutifani stressed that Anglo­American was in metallurgical coal for the long haul, and although they mining giant had fielded approaches for its Australian operations, it was not a seller.

AngloAmerican had shaved $US20 a tonne from costs across its coal operations, "turning our business into one of the most competitive in the world".

Mr Cutifani said many of his compe­titors were staying open because they were caught by take-or-pay rail contracts, which require miners to pay a fixed amount for a certain tonnage of coal, regardless of whether they ship it or not.

"There are those that are losing a lot of money hanging in there because of their take-or-pay contracts [but] at some point they wind out, and guys will have to make tough calls," he said.

He said the end-game was for AngloAmerican to emerge from the current malaise with greater market share, after less viable producers had been forced out.

"We still think it's a good long-term business but at the moment, like in iron ore, there is more volume than the market can digest," Mr Cutifani said.

On announcing its mothballing of Peace River last week, AngloAmerican said it planned to restart the operation when the market improved. In Australia, about 12,000 jobs have been cut from the broader coal sector following a string of mine closures.