JAKARTA, Mar 20: A blockade by workers at Freeport-McMoRan Inc’s Indonesian mine extended into a fifth day today, a union official said, with output still halted but maintenance workers allowed into the Grasberg site by protestors. A lengthy disruption to supplies from one of the world’s biggest copper mines could support benchmark metal prices that have dropped around 7 percent so far this year. ‘The blockade is still happening today,’ Albar Sabang, a senior official at a Freeport union told Reuters today. ‘The management is in dialogue with the protesters but we are not involved. Yesterday they allowed some technicians to go up to the mine site to take care of the machines.’ Freeport Indonesia, which employs around 24,000 workers and is expected to produce 43 percent more copper concentrate this year at 2 million tonnes, could not be reached for a comment on Friday.
(agencies)
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