The world's largest iron ore producer, Brazilian miner Vale, has announced that operations at its French subsidiary Rio Doce Manganèse Europe (RDME) have been suspended following a metal leakage in the electrical furnace.
Operations at the plant are to remain interrupted for a period of six months until February 2009.
Vale estimates that RDME's shutdown will result in a drop of 45,000 metric tons in its ferroalloy production.
RDME had already been operating at 60 percent of its installed capacity since an accident in August 2007.