Dundee Precious Metals Inc. flagged a downtime of up to 14 days at its Tsumeb copper smelter in Namibia due to a pressurization incident in the site's Ausmelt offgas system that injured two employees.
The Sept. 3 incident occurred during a restart after routine maintenance activities. A full investigation is now underway. Required repairs have been initiated, according to a Sept. 5 release.
Despite the shutdown, Dundee said that a planned maintenance shutdown in the fourth quarter will still proceed to increase throughput in 2020. As a result, the company expects the smelter to hit the low end of its 2019 guidance of between 225,000 tonnes and 250,000 tonnes of complex concentrate smelted.
Dundee noted that the next planned Ausmelt shutdown is not expected until 2021 due to recent operational improvements.
