China Zhuzhou to Reopen Lead Plant after Shutdown
Date: 13-Jan-06
Country: CHINA
Author: Polly Yam
The environmental protection bureau in Hunan has asked all plants that pour waste water containing the metallic element cadmium into the province's Xiang River to stop production, an official for the bureau said. He added that those facilities included Zhuzhou Smelter's lead plant.
Resuming production at Zhuzhou's lead plant may ease market concerns that supply from China, one of the world's largest lead suppliers, will fall as the government cracks down on pollution.
Zhuzhou's lead plant is one of the top five producers in China, which provided 402,368 tonnes of refined lead to the world market in the first 11 months of 2005.
"We are going to have a trial in two days," an official for Zhuzhou Smelter said, referring to the completion of repairs at the lead plant. The repairs started on December 20.
When asked about the government's order, he said: "We have a water treatment plant. Our water meets the standard."
Zhuzhou Smelter's zinc plant, which is China's largest by output, produced more than 320,000 tonnes of refined zinc and zinc products in 2005, according to company officials.
"Its zinc plant has a high-tech water treatment plant," the environmental protection bureau official said when asked why the bureau only wanted the lead plant closed. He did not say when it would allow the plant to resume production.
Zhuzhou's listed arm, Zhuye Torch Metals Co. Ltd, operates its zinc production.
CADMIUM
National environmental authorities are investigating cadmium pollution following a silt disturbance in the Xiang River, which provides drinking water to the cities of Zhuzhou, Xiangtan and the provincial capital of Changsha.
The Hunan environmental protection bureau said on Monday that cadmium levels in the Xiang River were still "one or two times" above the national standard, according to the official China Daily. They had fallen to within normal ranges by Thursday, another provincial environmental bureau official said.
Cadmium, a metallic element widely used in batteries, can cause liver and kidney damage and lead to bone diseases. Compounds containing cadmium are also carcinogenic.
River pollution is a sensitive topic in China, after an accident at a chemical plant in the Northeast sent a toxic benzene slick along a river that supplied drinking water to millions of Chinese and Russians.
Cadmium pollution in a river in southern China's Guangdong province had forced Shenzhen Zhongjin Lingnan Non-ferrous Metal Co. Ltd's Shaoguan smelter to completely stop production from Dec. 21.
The Shaoguan smelter usually produces about 170,000 tonnes of zinc and 70,000 tonnes of lead a year.
Shaoguan's closure has supported world prices of lead and zinc, that have risen 9.6 percent and 5.2 percent respectively this year.
Lead was bid at $1,152 a tonne by 0743 GMT on Thursday for the three-months contract of the London Metal Exchange. The LME three-months zinc stood at $2,008.
(Additional reporting by Lucy Hornby in Shanghai)
