Inquirer News Service
THE Philippine Associated Smelting and Refining Corp. (PASAR), the country's lone copper smelter, reported Monday a 5.4-percent increase in production to 103,869 metric tons of cathodes, or refined copper, in the January-August period from 98,580 metric tons in the same months last year.
It said its output of anodes, or unrefined copper, increased 2.7 percent to 122,051 metric tons from 118,900.
PASAR aims to raise cathode production by 3.6 percent year-on-year to 182,500 metric tons in full-year 2005 and anode production by 2.2 percent to 221,935 metric tons, company president Bruce Anderson said.
"We are confident that we will be able to achieve our production forecasts for the year as we continue to improve efficiency and implement de-bottlenecking," he said.
Copper cathodes from the PASAR plant in the eastern province of Leyte are among the top 10 Philippine export products.
PASAR is majority-owned by a consortium of Swiss metals firm Glencore International AG and Philippine investors that had acquired 90 percent of the government's shareholdings and all government receivables in the company through a competitive bidding in 1999.
Glencore earlier announced it was investing an additional $53 million to expand the PASAR smelting capacity to 720,000 metric tons copper concentrates a year from the present 600,000 and the refining capacity to 215,000 metric tons a year of cathodes from the present 172,500.
PASAR said its expansion project would improve the performance of the plants while allowing greater protection of the environment. With INQ7.net
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