Capstone Copper now expects Pinto Valley’s primary crusher in Arizona to return in mid-December after commissioning checks identified additional repairs to major mechanical components.
The 12 November update extends a planned maintenance outage. Replacement components are being manufactured off-site by the equipment supplier.
Capstone is deploying temporary mobile crushers and forecasts a partial concentrator restart in mid-November, at throughput of up to 40,000 tonnes a day. Neither restart was confirmed in the announcement.
The company estimates about 5,000 tonnes of additional lost copper output this year and has reduced the lower end of its consolidated 2026 production guidance from 200,000 to 195,000 tonnes.
Separately, Capstone said Chile’s truckers’ strike posed risks to shipments and consumables deliveries, although production at Mantoverde and Mantos Blancos remained unaffected as of the update.
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Source: Original company announcement.
Illustrative machinery file photograph: mining trucks and equipment at Rössing uranium mine, Namibia, 12 December 2013; not Pinto Valley or its crusher. Conleth Brady / IAEA Imagebank / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Resized and compressed; same licence retained.
By Energy People.
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