Drummond’s Colombian coal operations have restarted after protesters briefly shut down production following the death of a worker in an accident, a union leader said on Wednesday.
Drummond, Colombia’s second largest producer of the material, expects production to shoot up nearly 14 percent to 25 million tonnes in 2011 versus last year.
“The protest was lifted last night and shifts began,” Stevenson Avila, a senior member of Colombia’s mining and energy workers union known as Sintraminergetica, told Reuters.
Drummond is a 80-20 joint venture with Japan’s Itochu Corp.
Coal production in Colombia, the world’s No. 4 coal exporter, is dominated by the big thermal producers Drummond, Cerrejon and Glencore’s Prodeco.