Glencore, Quebec refute smelter shutdown report

Glencore (LSE: GLEN) and Quebec have denied a Reuters report that the company was planning to shut down its Horne smelter in the province — Canada’s largest copper-metal producing plant — due to steep environmental upgrades and operational costs.

Horne, located in the city of Rouyn-Noranda, processes concentrates to make copper anodes. These are then sent to another Glencore facility, the Canadian Copper Refinery (CCR) in Montreal East, to be turned into cathodes.

“Glencore is not currently considering the closure of the Horne Smelter or the CCR refinery,” a company spokesperson told various media outlets Monday after the Reuters story was published. 

Smelters globally are facing significant “financial, regulatory and operational pressure,” and Glencore’s smelters in Canada are not exempt from this, the spokesperson added. The facilities “play an important role in the supply of critical raw materials for the North American market and abroad.”

“The Horne smelter is not about to close its doors,” a spokesperson for Quebec Premier François Legault told media organizations including The Canadian Press Monday. “The company itself has denied the reports and reaffirmed its commitment to continuing its operations in Quebec,” the premier added.

While no production figures have been published for Horne and CCR, industry sources cited by Reuters have pegged their annual output at more than 300,000 tonnes. Much of the copper metal production goes to the United States, a net importer. 

A potential shutdown of Glencore’s Canadian operations would reinforce forecasts of global shortages, partly due to supply disruptions at major mines in Chile and Indonesia. Canada is a major exporter of copper and supplier to the U.S., accounting for about 17% of the country’s imports – second only to Chile.

According to Reuters, Glencore’s decision to close Horne and CCR stems from the high costs of making the operations environmentally safe, and is not related to a class-action lawsuit recently authorized by Quebec’s Supreme Court related to the smelter’s arsenic emissions dating back to 2020.

Modernizing Glencore’s Quebec copper operations would cost more than $200 million, Reuters said, citing unnamed sources. Both sites are said to employ as many as 1,000 people combined.

Founded nearly 100 years ago, the Horne smelter is said to have pioneered the recycling of electronic scrap in 1980. Glencore processes around 100,000 tonnes of discarded electronics annually to produce copper, nickel, cobalt, gold and silver, the company said on its website.

Earlier this year, Glencore sold its Pasar copper refinery in the Philippines, a custom smelter.