Word picked up by this humble corner of cyberpace this morning is that there has been a yet another trucking accident at the HudBay (HBM) (HBM.to) Constancia mine in South Peru. This is the fourth time (seriously) a truck has overturned laden with concentrate since operations began at the mine earlier this year.
The latest accident occurred on Saturday August 1st on the road between Chillotroya and Espinar. The local environmental authorities were called to the scene, because the overturned truck spilled a large quantity of copper concentrate onto the pasture lands of local farmers.
Today Wednesday, a emergency meeting of community member has been called by the closest town, Coporaque, due to the frequency of these accidents out of Constancia.
HBM doesn’t have the cash to fix the road? What’s certain is that according to the company’s 2q15 financial report they have a big backlog of concentrate waiting to be shipped out, so there’s more than a hint of the company pushing the infrastructure to outside good safety levels.
PS: IKN reported on one of the accidents earlier this year, the time in May when the truck overturned and the concentrate from Constancia fell into a local stream. HBM didn’t tell anyone about that accident, either.