Global miner BHP Billiton Ltd has closed a nickel refinery in Western Australia for about four months while it rebuilds a smelter furnace, cutting sales by about 28,000 tonnes and sending the price of the metal soaring.
BHP said on Thursday it had to bring forward a planned rebuilding of the furnace at its Kalgoorlie nickel smelter by nearly a year because it had become unsafe to run. The closure would halt production at its Kwinana refinery and cut global supply by almost 2 percent.
It estimated the shutdown of Kwinana would cut nickel sales by 25,000 tonnes in its financial year to June 2009, and by 3,000 tonnes for the current year to end-June. Total sales in the year to June 2007 were about 101,000 tonnes.
Source: Financial Times
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