Teck Resources Limited hopes it will be able to reach full output capacity at one of its Chilean copper projects by year end as engineers work to overcome ore problems.

Mr Roger Higgins senior VP of Teck Resources said that delays were caused by harder than expected ore from Teck’s Carmen de Andacollo mine and resolving it will require reforms to the mill circuit. The ore we’re receiving is on average a bit harder than what we’d expected. To get to the design throughput we will need to install some more crushing capacity. We would hope to have that resolved by the end of this year.

He said that the company is using a temporary solution of blasting and pre crushing to try to get as much production as possible from the mine which is located in northern Chile.

Canada’s largest diversified miner has plans to increase overall copper production by 40% in 2012. But last month Teck cut its 2011 copper sales forecast to 330,000 tonnes to 340,000 tonnes from 350,000 tonnes as the ore problem at Carmen de Andacollo along with operational issues at Quebrada Blanca weighed on production.

Mr Higgins said that Carmen de Andacollo will produce around 65,000 tonnes this year about 19% less than its full production target of 80,000 tonnes a year. He did not give production numbers for 2012. We are somewhat behind in terms of the sustained or average throughput. We just have to address this problem of the hardness of the ore so we can get some more tonnes through the plant.

He said that earlier this year, unusually heavy rains stopped operations at Quebrada Blanca and damaged the solution used extract the copper, causing a temporary loss of material. While he expects Quebrada Blanca will make up some of the lost production over the rest of year output would still be at least 10% behind original targets. We will have difficulty achieving our original targets. I think we’ll struggle to get to 80,000 tonnes.

(Sourced from Reuters)