Nyrstar suspends Port Pirie lead smelter, declares force majeure

LONDON (Reuters) - 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.

(Reporting by Eric Onstad. Editing by Jane Merriman)