CALAMA: Workers at Chile’s Chuquicamata, the world’s second biggest copper complex, began a strike over pay early on Monday, hitting output from global No. 1 producer Codelco and boosting prices for the metal.
News of the strike, the first at Chuquicamata since 1996, came hours after employees at the Altonorte copper smelter said they were close to reaching a wage deal with owner Xstrata to end a near weeklong strike that also fanned supply fears.
Codelco sources have estimated the Chuquicamata complex in far northern Chile, which includes the Chuquicamata and Mina Sur deposits and produces around 4 percent of the world’s mined copper, will lose up to 1,800 tons of copper output per day and cost the state around $8 million per day in lost revenue.
Chuquicamata was expected to produce 565,000 tons of copper in 2009.
“Operations have stopped. There is no production,” a Codelco official told Reuters, asking not to be named. Workers at the complex began their strike over pay at 0800 GMT.
The stoppage helped drive international copper prices higher, though a senior Codelco official said the state-owned giant has enough stocks to honor deliveries early this year.
Copper for three-month delivery on the London Metal Exchange rose 2 percent to $7,504 a ton, a fresh 16-month high and adding to gains of around 140 percent posted during 2009.
The main entrance to Chuquicamata remained quiet on Monday morning, with near-empty buses coming into the mine.
Some subcontractor workers were seen entering the site to conduct maintenance work, but hundreds of union workers stayed home.
