LONDON (Alliance News) - Central Asia Metals PLC Monday said its full-year production will be impacted by a problem with the Kounrad copper recovery plant in Kazakhstan.
The miner said a problem occurred with the solvent-extraction section of the plant which resulted in a "significant quantity" of organic inventory being lost "within a very short time frame," it said in a statement.
"After inspection, it was identified that one of nine weir plates in the recently commissioned solvent-extraction mixer settler had fallen out of position, resulting in the ability of the organic inventory to escape from the circuit via the raffinate and onto the dumps," said Central Asia Metals.
An investigation is underway to discover the reason for the problems, but production has restarted at a "much lower" flow rate, which will continue for "several more days" until the company can establish the effect of the problem on production.
"The impact on full-scale production at Kounrad is temporary and will not affect the ability of the plant to produce high-quality copper cathodes at extremely competitive costs of production," said the company.
"Once the situation has been properly assessed over the next few days and we have had chance to discuss the delivery of reagents with suppliers we will be making a further announcement," it added.
By Joshua Warner; joshuawarner@alliancenews.com; @JoshAlliance
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Central Asia Metals (CAML)