Italian experts brought in to review Bolivia's Karachipampa smelter

Bolivian state mining company Comibol is conducting yet another review of its problem-ridden Karachipampa lead-silver smelter, halted four times by technical issues.

A delegation of Italian metallurgists began working on a study of the 51,000t/y smelter's Kivcet blast furnace, Comibol said in a statement. An explosion at the furnace in November 2015 halted operations at the complex in Potosí department for a year.

The smelter, which was restarted late last year, has been producing lead and aims to produce combined lead-silver ingots, according to Comibol, part of a government plan to invest US$2bn in mining and metallurgical industries over the next five years.

"We want to move on to the phase of smelting and industrialization with state of the art technology. The goal is to build, and we're headed in that direction," mining minister César Navarro said in a separate statement. "The Karachipampa project is a delayed goal of the people of Potosí and the government will lend this project the importance it needs."

The company has been beset by problems over the past year, closing both the Karachipampa and Vinto smelters as well as its El Mutún iron-steel company due to technical problems and falling metals prices, while workers staged strikes at several of its units. In addition, Glencore last year filed for arbitration with the Bolivian government for the expropriation of mining assets in 2007-12.

The US$180mn Karachipampa smelter, which was brought online in 1988, has had to halt operations four times since 2013 due to problems with the Kivcet furnace.

The company is also working on upgrades of an Ausmelt blast furnace at the Vinto tin smelter, shut since late June. Vinto produced 13,111t refined tin in 2016, up 8.3% from 12,106t a year earlier, according to Comibol.

Bolivia is accelerating investment in mining projects after a rebound in metals prices helped boost first half minerals exports by 24.8% to US$1.034bn.

Bolivia, which is home to mines operated by Pan American Silver, Sumitomo, Coeur Mining, Orvana Minerals and Franklin Mining, produced 20,135t tin, 485,352t zinc, 74,501t lead and 45.9Moz silver in 2015, the most recent available figures, according to the USGS.