[miningmx.com] — WORKERS at Chile’s Chuquicamata, the world’s second biggest copper complex, began a strike over pay early on Monday, a union leader said, hitting output from global No. 1 producer Codelco.
News of the stoppage, the most serious by Codelco’s unionized workers 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 week-long strike that also fanned supply fears and helped boost prices.
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 tonnes of copper output per day and cost the state around $8 million per day in lost revenue.
Chuquicamata was expected to produce 565,000 tonnes of copper in 2009.
Expectations of a stoppage at the complex 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.
At 0903 GMT, three-month copper was trading up around 1% at $7,455 per tonne, a fresh 16-month high and adding to gains of around 140 percent posted during 2009.
“It’s official. The strike has started,” Jaime Graz, a leader at one of Chuquicamata’s three unions, told Reuters as the stoppage began at 5 a.m. local time (0800 GMT) on Monday.
