Hachinohe Smelting to Resume Zinc Production Soon

Aomori based zinc smelter, Hachinohe Smelting, of which Mitsui Mining & Smelting controls around 85%, restarts the operation next week after the stoppage due to tsunami damage during the major earthquake in March. The smelter plans to normalize the operation in mid-June. Toho Zinc also plans to restart the operation at Onahama smelter in Fukushima in early June. With the restarts, all idled zinc smelters resume the operation.

Hachinohe Smelting restarts the process to make zinc sinter at first and then restarts smelting furnaces. The firm makes annual 110,000 tonnes of zinc with 98.5% or more purity. The firm can keep the shipment from the inventory despite of the stoppage when the firm built inventory preparing for planned maintenance.

Toho Zinc’s Onahama smelter in early June. Toho Zinc’s Annaka smelter will normalize the operation with the sinter supply from Onahama while Annaka smelter operates at around 30% of the capacity due to stoppage of sinter supply from Onahama.

Dowa Holdings group’s Akita smelter also restarted the operation in April while the operation was stopped after the quake. The quake stopped maximum 70% of zinc production temporarily. With restart of Hachinohe Smelting and Onahama smelter, all the stopped plants will resume the operation.