JOHANNESBURG, May 24 - Power cuts in recent days have hit three southern African aluminium smelters operated by BHP Billiton and more cuts are expected due to peak winter electricity demand, the mining group said on Thursday.
The firm , the world's biggest mining group, operates the Hillside and Bayside aluminium smelters in South Africa and Mozal in Mozambique.
"There has been load-shedding at all three smelters this week and we expect more shedding in coming months," spokeswoman Bronwyn Wilkinson said.
She said the power cuts would affect aluminium production, but declined to give details.
Under the company's contract with South African utility Eskom, power can be interrupted to the smelters in order to keep the overall electricity grid system stable. Aluminium smelters are among the biggest industrial users of power.
The most recent outage lasted 40 minutes on Wednesday evening at one potline at Mozal, Wilkinson said.
Rolling blackouts have been sporadically hitting South Africa, which has failed to build enough generating capacity to keep up with strong economic growth.
BHP Billiton is the world's sixth biggest producer of primary aluminium.
Production at Hillside for the 12 months to end-March was 704,000 tonnes, at Bayside 193,000 tonnes and total output at Mozal, of which Billiton owns 47 percent, was 564,000 tonnes.
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