July 9 (Reuters) - Metals and mining company Nyrstar NYR.BR said on Tuesday that it was extending force majeure at its Port Pirie lead and zinc smelter in Australia until the last week of July.
The Belgium-based company now expects both the TSL and the blast furnace to restart by the end of July.
At the end of June it had already extended the stoppage until the second week of this month, following an unplanned outage at the blast furnace in May, having previously stated that production would resume within days. company said it was still assessing the impact of the outage and reiterated that the extended shutdown would have a material negative impact on production at Port Pirie and underlying earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA).
Nyrstar added it would provide further information in due course but at the latest when it publishes H1 results on July 31.
Port Pirie produced 160,000 tonnes of lead metal last year, down 7% from the previous year.