Hudbay reports production at its 777 Mine in Flin Flon has been temporarily suspended due to an incident that occurred on Friday during routine maintenance of the hoist rope and skip, which is the bucket used to hoist ore from underground. A news release states the hoist rope detached from the skip, causing the skip to fall to the bottom of the shaft. There were no injuries and all underground personnel were safely evacuated from the mine using the secondary ramp access.

An inspection of the damage to the shaft is underway and it is expected to take several weeks to fully assess the damage and the remedial work needed. In the meantime, the company has notified its insurers and has implemented its business continuity plans to mitigate potential impacts to production from the Manitoba business unit. This includes reassigning equipment and personnel to the Lalor mine in Snow Lake and continuing to operate the zinc plant by processing available zinc concentrate inventory and optimizing the production of zinc concentrate from the Snow Lake operations.

The company will provide a further update once it has a better understanding of the remedial work required to resume production at 777.