Germany Chancellor plans lithium deal with Serbia after Rio ruling
Olaf Scholz plans to visit Serbia this week to secure supplies of lithium that are critical for the nation’s energy transition and auto industry.
Nyrstar has halted production at its Port Pirie lead smelter in Australia and declared force majeure, the Belgian-headquartered metals and mining company said on Thursday.
It stopped output at Port Pirie on May 28 due to an unplanned outage at the blast furnace, a spokesman said in a email.
“We are currently in the process of assessing the outage and expect that production should resume within the coming days. There will be a negative impact to Nyrstar’s lead metal production due to the outage,” he added.
Port Pirie produced 160,000 tonnes of lead metal last year, down 7 percent from the previous year.
(By Eric Onstad; Editing by Jane Merriman)
