LONDON (Alliance News) - ZincOx Resources PLC said Monday that production at its Korean Recycling Plant fell in June as a result of a short suspension in operations as it carried out debottlenecking modifications that required a cooling of the furnace.
The electric arc furnace dust zinc recycling facilities operator said in a statement ahead of its annual general meeting Monday that following the record production month in May, production in June has fallen as a result of the short suspension.
The underlying performance of the plant continued to improve, said ZincOx, which added that, ignoring the suspension, production in July, assuming no major work, is expected to set a new record.
The suspension allowed the company to carry out de-bottlenecking modifications, including the installation of cleaning manholes in the drop-boxes of the gas handling system. At high output, the zinc product settles out of the offgases in the central part of the drop-boxes making them inaccessible to cleaning through the existing access doors. This build-up reduced offgas flow and so hit plant capacity. New access points have also been created which allow the areas to be cleared so as to avoid significant accumulation and prevent any restriction to the flow of offgas or plant throughput.
The output of the plant is determined by four factors; the tonnage of material being treated per hour, the number of hours being worked in a given period, the amount of zinc in each tonne of feed processed and the proportion of zinc being recovered. Currently, feed rate is at about 80% of target, running time is at about 96% of target, recovery is at about 96% of target and feed grade is at about 103% of target, said ZincOx.
Shares in ZincOx were trading 1.20% higher at 10.5 pence per share Monday morning.
By Alice Attwood; aliceattwood@alliancenews.com; @AliceAtAlliance
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