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(Bloomberg) -- First Quantum Minerals Ltd. was cleared to begin shipping out stockpiled copper in Panama, the latest sign authorities may be willing to negotiate a restart of the company’s giant shuttered mine.
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Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino said Thursday he has authorized the export of “ground material” from the Cobre Panama mine, referring to copper concentrate that the company has kept stockpiled at the site since it was ordered to close in 2023. He also said his government plans to start addressing the mine’s closure and its path forward next week, “God willing.”
Mulino’s comments come as Vancouver-based First Quantum campaigns to resuscitate its flagship mine, which was ordered to close in December 2023 amid anti-mining protests. The $10 billion operation accounted for about 5% of the country’s economy before its closure and generated about 40% of First Quantum’s revenue.
“What comes next — that’s exactly what we are going to start to deal with,” said Mulino in a press conference. “It’s a broad, thorny topic. The issue of the mine must be handled with great responsibility and taking into consideration national interests and protecting and benefitting Panama.”
Shares of First Quantum jumped as much as 12.6% Thursday in Toronto.
The Panamanian president spent recent weeks meeting with local businesses that relied on Cobre Panama and hearing from workers that were impacted by its closure. Some 54,000 people lost jobs, according to estimates by the National Council of Private Companies.
“It’s dramatic, what is happening,” Mulino said. “We are feeling it, in unemployment, lack of revenue for the state and in many other things like paying providers that haven’t been paid everything they are owed.”
Mulino had waited to turn his attention to the mine while completing controversial social security reforms that have now nearly passed Panama’s congress.
First Quantum on Thursday was also cleared to turn on its 300 megawatt thermal power plant in order to export the copper concentrate.
The 120,000 metric tons of idled material was “being wasted, and Panama has invested a barbarity of money into it,” Mulino said, adding that First Quantum has to reimburse Panama once the material is processed outside the country.