Bauxite production was expected to resume yesterday afternoon after the kilns at Linden Mining Enterprise, LINMINE were turned on Tuesday morning and the company's priority now is to regain the confidence of its customers, Chief Executive Officer Horace James said.
The Government Information Agency (GINA) quoted James as saying in a brief interview, "we lost over 6,000 tons of production which amounts to just below US$1M in revenue."
The kilns had been turned off since April 2, and prior to the total failure of the steam power plant at the privately-owned Linden Power Company (LPC), LINMINE was scheduled to ship some 6,000 tons of bauxite to customers in the Mediterranean. That shipment, James said, has now been rescheduled to mid-May and another two shipments are earmarked for the end of May.
According to James, the immediate task facing LINMINE is regaining the confidence of its customers in the Mediterranean and North America since they have been complaining about late shipments, GINA reported.
But that would pose a strain on the company's already tight financial situation, the Linmine CEO said.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere at Linden seems to be one of "business as usual" as the community is now being fed with power from one 2.5 MW generator, and three 1.5 MW units, GINA stated. However, this brings the generation for both Linden and Linmine to 7 MW of electricity, an estimated 70 percent of the required power to satisfy both residents and bauxite production.
But the Linmine top official expressed optimism that power supply to the region would be further enhanced with the arrival of the two 1.5 MW sets ordered by government and scheduled to arrive in Georgetown by yesterday.
James expects that the sets will be commissioned in Linden by this weekend, bringing the total power supply to the Linmine operations and the community to the required 10 MW.
The sets will be stationed at Linmine to boost the bauxite production capacity. In the interim, GINA said, consumers will experience low voltage during the peak hours of 6 pm - 10 pm.
Meantime, a second 2.5 MW set from the LPC should be in operation by next Wed-nesday, following the arrival of a turbo charger for the engine on Tuesday. The LPC steam plant will be out of operation for three weeks to facilitate the alignment and repairs of worn motors in Trinidad. "We'll continue to have normal maintenance operations," James said, while also disclosing that Linmine will continue with its redundancy scheme that started last August. To this effect another 28 persons are to proceed on voluntary redundancy, bringing to a total 522 persons who have been sent off voluntarily or involuntarily since August, following the union and company negotiations.