LON
LOLMI
LON - Lonmin - Number one furnace shut down
Lonmin Plc
(Incorporated in England and Wales)
(Registered in the Republic of South Africa under registration number
1969/000015/10)
JSE code: LON
Issuer Code: LOLMI & ISIN: GB0031192486
("Lonmin")
Number One Furnace Shut Down
Lonmin announces that a leak has occurred adjacent to one of the matte tap holes
in its number one furnace. The furnace has been shut down and no one was hurt
as a result of the leak. We currently believe that the necessary repairs to the
furnace will take around 30 to 40 days. During this time we will run our three
Pyromet furnaces and build up concentrate inventory ahead of the Smelter. We
currently have no plans to sell additional concentrate over and above our
current commitments.
In the second half of 2006 in order to provide additional smelting capacity and
as a back up to the number one furnace we took a decision to recommission our
Merensky furnace. We plan to run this in parallel with the number one furnace
in the second half of our 2007 financial year to reduce accumulated concentrate
inventory and allow us to mitigate the impact of the number one furnace outage
on production. Our best current estimate is that our production for the first
half of the 2007 financial year will be reduced by between 30,000 and 40,000
ounces of Platinum. We will use our best endeavours to recover these Platinum
ounces in the second half of the financial year.
Enquiries:
Alex Shorland-Ball +44 (0)207 201 6060 or
Vice President, +44 (0)7917 038 684
Investor Relations & Communications
Date: 18/12/2006 16:13:14 Produced by the JSE SENS Department.
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