Peñoles produces 20% less copper

Grupo Peñoles registered a 5.9% reduction in its gold production and a 20% reduction in its copper production in concentrates in the first quarter of 2020, at the interannual rate.

The company also reduced its manufacture of copper cathodes at an annual rate of 10.7% percent.

In the case of gold, the fall was due to the slow recovery in the leach yards of La Herradura and the lower volume of ore processed on Christmas Eve.

Regarding copper content, the company was affected by lower grades and recoveries in Sabinas.

Peñoles: resultados financieros

Finally, Peñoles had a lower production of copper cathodes due to the lower grade and the slow recovery in the Milpillas leach yards.

Lead contents were 6.8% higher, thanks to better head grades in Fresnillo and Saucito. Likewise, the zinc content was 5.1% higher due to the greater volume of ore benefited in most of the mines, mainly Bismark. Silver had a marginal increase.

Peñoles, other results

For the metallurgical division, the production of all refined metals was lower than the previous year.

Meanwhile, the volumes of refined gold and silver were affected due to the reduction in purchases of content-rich materials from third parties, since the annual scheduled maintenance stoppage was carried out in the Lead Smelter in March, which limited the production and availability of bullion to be processed at the Lead-Silver Refinery.

Zinc was also affected in the production volume, due to the fact that a scheduled stoppage was carried out for the interconnection of the Silver Recovery II project.

In the inorganic chemicals business, sodium sulfate and magnesium sulfate had marginal production variations of -0.3% and + 0.2%, respectively.

However, ammonium sulfate had a negative variation of 27.7%, due to the low availability of sulfuric acid generated in the smelter. Magnesium oxide had a drop of 2.9 percent.

Profile

Grupo Peñoles has integrated operations in the mining-metallurgical industry, through the extraction and processing of minerals, and the smelting and refining of non-ferrous metals.

In the extraction and processing of minerals, mainly lead, zinc and doré concentrates are obtained, which are treated and refined in a metallurgical complex to obtain refined metal.

The metallurgical complex known as “Met-Mex” receives ore and doré concentrates from related and unrelated mining companies for their treatment, refining and refining, where they are obtained as a finished product, mainly silver, gold, zinc and lead refined for their subsequent commercialization. .