Friday, June 2, 2006

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AFP): The dumping of cheap Chinese bauxite on the international market has forced a temporary shutdown and hundreds of layoffs at a Guyana-based bauxite company largely owned by Cambior of Canada, officials said on Wednesday.

Peter Benny, Industrial Relations Manager at Omai Bauxite Mines Incorporated (OBMI) said the company would shutdown operations for two months from July 1 and layoff many of its 514 workers, joining 61 others already retrenched.

Benny attributed OBMI's decision to low sales of refractory A-grade, super calcined bauxite because China was selling the product on the world market at a lower price.

"Our competitor is selling at a far cheaper price and some of our customers chose to switch to China which is cheaper," he told AFP.

OBMI has stockpiled at least 40,000 tonnes of bauxite, awaiting a lucrative market, and the company could resume production before the planned reopening in September if the price is right, Benny said.

With fuel accounting for 55 percent of production costs, the company, he said, has been also faced with a 30 percent increase in the price of Bunker C fuel being used by kilns and other equipment at the bauxite mine located at Linden, 70-miles south-east of Guyana's capital Georgetown.

Godwin Primo, Secretary of the OBMI Branch of the National Association of Agricultural Commercial and Industrial Employees (NAACIE) said the union would formally ask the Guyana government to intervene in the labour dispute.

The Guyana government holds a 30 percent stake in OBMI, while Cambior owns 70 percent in the company that was formed in December 2004.

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