Gold and copper miner OZ Minerals  has announced a loss of nearly $300 million and says its chief executive Terry Burgess will leave the company in 2014.

OZ Minerals, operator of the Prominent Hill mine in South Australia’s mid north made a loss of $295 million for the 12 months to December 2013, which is a sharp decline from the $152 million profit recorded for 2012.

Excluding the impact of one-off items like writedowns, the company made an underlying loss of $62.5 million.

The company announced chief executive Terry Burgess will step down in the next 12 months.

Chairman Neil Hamilton said Burgess would remain in the job, during the staged succession planning process.

“Terry’s leadership is vital to the company given the number of important operational objectives we want to achieve this year and we are delighted that he remains in his role to deliver these outcomes,” he said.

The profit result was impacted by writedowns of $231 million to the value of the company’s Prominent Hill operations.

But revenue also dropped 35 per cent to $644 million due to a slide in sales volumes and lower commodity prices.

The company said it would continue to look for growth opportunities in copper in 2014.

OZ Minerals announced a final unfranked dividend of 10 cents per share, down from 20 cents per share a year ago.