Revett Minerals (RVM.TO; NYSEMKT:RVM) announced today they have suspended operations at their 100% owned Troy Mine because of the difficult underground geotechnical conditions.
The company has not provided a definitive timeline, but Revett hopes to return to resume all underground operations within 2 weeks. As we are entering the Christmas and New Year’s period, we however don’t expect full output before the 2nd half of January 2013.
Although the company believes the difficult ground conditions have been stabilized, Revett isn’t taking any risk and will start monitoring ground conditions on a daily basis. Revett Minerals has a strict ‘safety first’ procedure, so we can only respect their decision to suspend operations at Troy.
This suspension means the company will not meet our guidance of producing 270,000 ounces in Q4. We are withdrawing our FY 2013 production and cash cost estimates until it becomes clear what the repercussions of this operations suspension are.
Disclosure: The author owns shares of Revett Minerals Inc. and might buy more if the share price plummets over the next few days. Revett Minerals Inc. is a sponsoring company. Please see our disclaimer for current positions.
