PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Rare earths miner Lynas has told shareholders that it is planning a temporary production shutdown of its Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP), in Malaysia, during December.
Lynas CEO Amanda Lacaze on Tuesday said that while the company had previously lodged an application to increase the yearly volume of lanthanide concentrate that could be processed at LAMP, the approval had not yet been received.
As a result, the company was anticipating and planning for a temporary shutdown of neodymium and praseodymium production in December.
Lacaze said that some 400 t of production could potentially be lost in the December quarter as a result of not receiving this approval, and as a result of production volume losses in the final commissioning of the Lynas NEXT project.
In the meantime, Lacaze noted that the review committee was expected to submit its report on the LAMP on Tuesday, with the company expecting the Malaysian government to take “some time” to consider the report.
She noted that the review committee had conducted a public hearing in November, which had been attended by a number of the company’s staff and local residents, where all five agencies involved in the review committee reported that the company was compliant with all regulations.
The review committee had focused its investigation on safety, health and environmental aspects, as well as residue storage at LAMP.