European zinc producer Budel Zinc BV, owned by Australian metals group Zinifex Ltd, has shut part of its plant in the Netherlands for about 10 days for maintenance repairs, but production losses are ruled out, a company official said on Monday.
Budel closed its roaster, the part of the plant where zinc oxide is first fed before smelting, on Friday and work is expected to continue this week at the plant, which produced around 210,000 tonnes of zinc metal in 2003.
"Our roasting plant is shut once every five years for a major overhaul, although it's just our normal cycle of maintenance," General Manager Lucien van den Boogaard told Reuters from Budel, Eindhoven in southern Netherlands.
"We've heard some reports that we were losing production, but that is not the case.
The shutdown is a relatively normal procedure and there will hardly be any effect on production as we prepared for potential losses of kelsine (the oxide product that comes out of the roaster) and built up stores to feed the smelter".