ArcelorMittal, the world’s biggest steelmaker, will resume full operations at its Liberian iron- ore mine next year, Arthur Massaquoi, public relations officer of the company’s Liberia unit, said.
Acelormittal in March scaled down operations at its Nimba mine in Liberia by half, firing 80 percent of its expatriate workers because of the global financial crisis.
The first iron-ore exports from the plant will now leave in 2011 and not next year, Massaquoi told reporters in the capital, Monrovia, today. In December last year, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said the company would not be able to meet its deadline of shipping its first ore from the mine in 2009.
AccelorMittal signed a $1.6-billion iron-ore exploration agreement with Liberia in 2007. The company is redeveloping the mine after it was abandoned in 1992 during a civil war that engulfed the West African nation. It says it expects 12.5 million tons of ore a year, or 21 percent of the company’s production, from Nimba.
Source: Bloomberg
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