Mining Weekly reported that African Rainbow Minerals furnace, which had exploded at the company's Cato Ridge works on Sunday, would be out of operation for the next five to six months.

Mr Jan Steenkamp CE of African Rainbow Minerals said that the rest of the ferromanganese plant, which had stopped running owing to the implementation of a prohibition order, is expected to resume operations by Friday, with a slow ramp up in production. He added that this also depended on the staff and convincing them that the environment was safe.

As per report the explosion was caused by an inflow of water into the furnace, this was initially caused by a water leak, however, Mr Steenkamp noted that the cause of the leak had not yet been identified.

When asked about the potential loss of production, Mr Steenkamp said that all the furnaces at the Cato Ridge works produced some 220 000 tonne per year of ferromanganese, which would equate to between 80 tonne and 100 tonne in a week. He added that, at this stage, the company had not quantified what losses had been incurred.