Swiss-based trading house and miner Glencore plans the progressive ramp-up of its Lady Loretta zinc mine in Queensland, Australia, in the first half of 2018, the company said Tuesday on an investors conference call.
Lady Loretta is a high-grade underground zinc mine near Mount Isa in North Queensland. Production was suspended in 2015 because of falling zinc prices.
Glencore's production guidance on zinc showed around 100,000 mt of zinc concentrate is expected to come back to the market in 2018 with the restart of Lady Loretta, representing 20% of the 500,000 mt of production suspended in 2015.
The mine will run at full capacity until 2020.
Glencore also announced the development of the Zhairem (Kazzinc) brownfield mine, with 160,000 mt/year capacity. It will replace/exceed the Maleevsky and Tishinsky mines in Kazakhstan, as they gradually reach their end of life close to 2023.
First production from Zhairem is expected in 2020.
Overall, Glencore expects zinc production to rise 18% for the 2017-2020 period.
The company said the market needed more zinc, so it did not expect negative impacts on pricing.
It said the market was ready to absorb production, but it would continue to monitor events and respond accordingly.
The LME three-months zinc price was $3,125/mt at Monday's close, up 11.2% year on year. On a potential increase in production from the McArthur River mine in Australia, the company said "there was no additional guidance to increase production."
