Canada's HudBay Minerals will close its ageing Flin Flon, Manitoba, copper smelter before July 2010 and its While Pine, Michigan, refinery shortly thereafter, the company said on Thursday, citing the deteriorating economics of the operations.
The financial impact on the company will be minimal, but the Toronto-based company will cut 290 jobs as a result of the closures, it said in a statement.
HudBay had previously warned it may close the Flin Flon smelter next year due to low copper treatment charges -- the fee charged to third parties to process their copper concentrate -- as well as tighter greenhouse-gas emission standards that would have forced costly upgrades at the 80-year-old operation.
"Today's business realities, combined with the age of the plant and regulatory changes, make continued operation of this plant impractical and uneconomic," HudBay Chief Executive Peter Jones said.
The smelter, which processes copper concentrate into anodes and then sends them by rail to the White Pine refinery, has annual capacity of 90,000 tonnes.
Source: Reuters
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