South African firm Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) has completed the rebuild of its Anglo Converter Plant (ACP) Phase A unit in in Rustenburg.
The ACP Phase A unit is now ramping up to operate at full capacity by the end of this year.
First converter matte from the rebuilt plant is ready to dispatch to the South African firm’s base metals refinery for the processing stage.
According to the company, the completion of the rebuild of the Phase A unit comes several months ahead of schedule.
Anglo American Platinum CEO Natascha Viljoen said: “The ACP operations and projects teams have done an extraordinary job in safely completing the rebuild and recommissioning of the ACP Phase A unit.
“We were able to procure and deliver long lead-time items to site six months ahead of schedule, despite the impact of Covid-19 on supply chains, enabling us to bring forward the rebuild to the end of 2020, ahead of our initial expectations of Q2 2021.
“First converter matte is now ready to be dispatched, allowing us to re-establish the processing pipeline to finished metals. I am also pleased that our marketing team has worked tirelessly with our customers to mitigate the impact of the interruption and manage our contractual obligations during this period.”
With the early and safe restart of the ACP Phase A unit, Amplats also upgraded refined production guidance for this year to between 2.6-2.7 million platinum group metal (PGM) ounces, up from the previously stated guidance of approximately 2.5 million PGM ounces.
In March, Amplats announced a temporary shutdown of the entire Anglo Converter Plant, following an explosion at the site.
