Hochschild suspends operations at Arcata mine

Hochschild Mining on Wednesday said it was suspending operations at the Arcata precious metal mine in south west Peru due to lower silver prices.

The company said the operation would be in full care and maintenance by the second quarter of 2019.

“An exploration programme and permitting work are expected to continue along with a regular review of the market conditions for potential restart of operations in the future,” the company said.

“In addition, the Arcata unit has already been fully impaired for accounting purposes.”

Chief executive Ignacio Bustamante said “the continuing low silver price over some years and current geological conditions leaves us no option”.

“We have recently been making the necessary preparations and will work closely with our employees and key contractors to mitigate the impact and manage carefully the staged shutdown of operations whilst maintaining our community programmes,” he said.