Vale still waiting for parts to fix furnance

The planned rebuild of a downed flash furnace at Vale's Copper Cliff smelting complex will start as soon as necessary parts arrive, says a company spokeswoman.

"We have to wait for parts," Angie Robson said Wednesday, about the No. 2 furnace, which went out of service in February, after experiencing problems in January. "It's still a minimum of 16 weeks we are looking at."

Robson said the cause of the furnace breakdown has not been determined.

"We have a preliminary report pending demolition of the furnace, at which time we will be doing additional analysis into what happened, so it is premature to comment on cause at this time," she said.

In the meantime, Vale will be temporarily shifting some workers out of its Garson and Stobie mines while the No. 2 furnace is down. There will be no changes to production at the Coleman, Creighton and Copper Cliff North mines, said Robson.

As for the smelter workforce, Robson said smelter employees affected by the downed furnace have been reassigned.

"There are no plans for employee layoffs at all," she said. "In order to minimize the impacts on our people, we have reviewed work that is currently being completed by contractors to look for opportunities to resource the work internally with our own employees.

"We have also accelerated our planned maintenance periods in some of our plants and mines to accommodate the re-build of the furnace.

Robson said the planned maintenance schedule for the Copper Cliff smelting complex this July and August will be adjusted to take into account the No. 2 furnace rebuild work.