Singapore 18/05/2016 - Ordinary income at Mitsui Kinzoku's metals business was 5.7 billion yen ($52 million) in fiscal 2015, missing its target of 12 billion yen due to operational delays at the Caserones mine in Chile.
The company, also known as Mitsui Mining & Smelting Co, booked an impairment loss of 19.3 billion yen due to unprofitable operations at Caserones in the last fiscal year, it said in its mid-term plan released last week.
The Japanese firm is now aiming to grow its ordinary income from its metals segment to 13 billion yen in fiscal 2018.
The operational rate at Caserones has risen steadily and its mid-term plan up until fiscal 2018 is for operations there to reach full capacity, Mitsui said.
Mitsui's metals business includes metals and recycling and mineral resources. The latter includes investments in the Caserones mine via Pan Pacific Copper (PPC) and the Huanzala mine and Palka mine in Peru, which produces zinc, lead and silver.
The Caserones project is operated by Minera Lumina Copper, which is majority-owned by PPC. The mine had started to produce refined copper in March 2013 and copper concentrates in May last year but its plan to reach production has been hit by delays.
The mine has nameplate capacity of 150,000 tonnes per year of copper in concentrate and 3,000 tonnes per year of molybdenum in concentrate.
The company expects to produce 117,700 tonnes of zinc in April-September this year, up 12.6 percent from output of 104,500 tonnes in the same period of last year.
(Editing by Mark Shaw)