General News
18 September, 2024
Copper smelter could have future as Glencore leaves door ajar
The mining giant says there could still be hope for the smelter after 2030.
The future of Mount Isa’s copper smelter was one of the hottest topics at last week’s Meeting of the Mines conference and Glencore has left the door slightly ajar for it to remain operational beyond the proposed 2030 closing date.
The smelter is considered a key piece of infrastructure for the North West Minerals Province as it not only provides a place for local copper mines to send concentrate for processing, but it is also a key player in the production of acid, which is used in virtually every mine site across the region.
Last year, the owner of Mount Isa Mines said the smelter was “currently expected to operate to 2030 subject to the approval of additional capital investment”.
Currently, Glencore’s Mount Isa copper smelter attracts ore from all over Australia, and even overseas, for processing.
There are fears in the mining industry that if the smelter were to close, it would be virtually impossible to build another one under the current environmental framework imposed by the governments.
Glencore’s zinc assets chief operating officer Sam Strohmayr said on Friday that the Mount Isa asset could still have a future beyond the expected 2030 closure.
“We’re certainly keen to be talking with government as well about how that sort of looks going forward,” Mr Strohmayr told the forum in response to a question from North West Weekly about the smelter’s future, which pointed to the prospect that Harmony’s Eva copper mine was hoping to provide about 25 per cent of the product required for the smelter each year.
“I think one of the key things initially is to make sure you do have supply, and certainly we’re looking at Eva coming on.
“There’s other supply ... there’s other copper concentrate coming into the market within Australia as well, so I think that the supply side of things is looking OK.
“It’s just the headwinds that all smelters are really facing around the world at the moment is the (decarbonisation) environment that we’re currently in.
“I’m sure everybody’s touched on (at the forum) the cost pressures (of operating) that we are not immune to.
“Energy, labour, transport –they’re all the sort of things that we think everybody acknowledges.
“They’re the things that we’re sort of trying to weigh up.
“I’d be encouraging people to be exploring for gas; if we can get more gas, cheaper gas, closer to Mount Isa, that’d be great for us, for example.
“So I think anything that’s from a government perspective that encourages the enablers for industry in general helps the smelters in Mount Isa.”
In some good news for Mount Isa and the North West, Glencore won’t need to re-brick the smelter until October, 2026, based on the company’s assessment.
“In terms of the copper smelter, really pleasingly, this current brick life is going a little bit better than our original plans,” Mr Strohmayr said in his presentation.
“We typically bank on having a four-year brick life on the copper smelter.
“It’s actually going a little bit better in terms of our brick life monitoring, so we see the brick life lasting out to October ’26, which is a little bit further than what we originally planned.
“So our current planning is that we’ll do a re-brick in 2026 and extend out to 2030.
“We’re needing to continue to invest in the copper smelter as we transition from providing our own concentrates to relying on third party concentrates coming from all over Australia and internationally.
“We need to improve our material handling, material sampling and weighing to make sure that we have an accurate measure of what’s actually coming into the smelter.
“The smelting business ... we’re in a pretty interesting period globally.
“The treatment charges that you receive for copper concentrates is at all time lows, which is due to not that much concentrate around and lots of smelters running, so it’s a pretty tight industry to be in at the moment.
“But the investments that we’re doing is all about trying to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the smelter.”