Lundin Mining suspended activities at its Chapada mine in Brazil and Neves-Corvo mine in Portugal after an outage at the former and a fatal accident at the latter.
The Neves-Corvo mine is expected to reopen mid-week, the company said in a September 27 media statement, but activity resumption at the Chapada copper and gold mine will take longer following yesterday’s incident.
The protection system in Chapada’s electrical substation failed when power was restored, which, in turn, damaged the processing plant’s SAG and ball mill motors. Lundin indicated that the motors need extensive repairs, even with two spares currently being assessed for operational integrity, and added that its copper processing capacity will be impacted through the rest of the year.
Consequently, the company withdrew its H2 2020 copper and gold production guidance for Chapada. The Brazilian mine will be under care and maintenance until Lundin assesses a staged resumption of processing activities. In H1 2020, the Chapada mine produced 25,680mt of copper and was projected to yield 51,000-56,000mt by the end of the year.
At Neves-Corvo, the company said it shut down all operations after a fatal accident on September 25. The company is assessing the cause of the accident, which occurred in an active production and scaling activities area. While the rest of the mine will resume operations by September 30, the area where the accident occurred will remain closed until the investigation is complete.
Neither the Portuguese copper, zinc, lead, and silver mine’s production nor its guidance will be impacted by the incident. In H1 2020, Neves-Corvo produced 19,634mt of copper, 36,934mt of zinc, and 3,027mt of lead. Lundin has projected copper output of 35,000-40,000mt and zinc output of 70,000-75,00mt at Neves-Corvo by the end of 2020.