off-the-wire

Sibanye resumes output at US Stillwater mine after shaft repairs

Kitco Media
By Reuters
Published:
Updated:
Reuters
April 24 (Reuters) - South Africa's Sibanye Stillwater has resumed output at its Stillwater West mine in Montana, United States, and production should be back to normal around the end of April, the company said on Monday, after repairs to shaft infrastructure. The six-week production halt is expected to have cut output at Stillwater West mine by about 30,000 ounces of platinum and palladium, equivalent to 7% of Sibanye's 2022 U.S platinum group metal (PGM) production, the company said.


"Production from the deeper levels at the Stillwater West mine has resumed," Sibanye said in a statement, adding output levels should be normalised around the end of the month. It halted production from the lower levels of the shaft after a winder that accesses the deeper levels of the mine was damaged during maintenance.


Last year, Sibanye's U.S PGM production declined 26% to 421,133 ounces after a seven-week work stoppage caused by floods in Montana. Sibanye produced 1.73 million PGM ounces from its southern African operations in 2022. The company has said an electricity crisis in the world's top PGM producer South Africa could cut PGM output by as much as 15%, tightening global supplies of metals mostly used in the automotive industry.


World number one PGM miner Anglo American Platinum has said South Africa's power crisis, blamed on the frequent breakdown of its aged coal-fired plants, could lower its output by 5% in 2023. (Reporting by Nelson Banya; editing by Barbara Lewis)

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