BERLIN – An ongoing severe drought in Germany has prompted minerals miner K+S on Tuesday to shut down production at a second site at its Werra mine network in central Germany.
K+S shut down production at its Wintershall site two weeks ago and has now temporarily halted output at is Hattorf site, as exceptionally low water levels in the Werra river have restricted its ability to dispose of waste water.
The company said its Unterbreizbach site continued to operate.
"K+S continues to make every effort to increase production at the Werra Plant as soon as possible," the company said in a statement.
Every day of stoppage costs K+S up to €1.5-million per site, meaning the outage has so far has had a negative impact of up to €24-million on the company's earnings.
A spokesman for K+S said the group stood by its guidance for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the year ending December 31 to be between €660-million and €740-million.
Around 1 150 of K+S's 4 000 employees at the Werra mine network are affected by the production stoppages, the spokesman said. The company is evaluating whether a certain number of workers can be transferred to a nearby site in Neuhof-Ellers.
Shares in K+S fell 1.7% to €18.11 by 09:00 GMT, compared to Germany's MDAX which was slightly negative.