Australia's IGO suspends nickel output after fire

MELBOURNE, Dec 5 (Reuters): Australia's IGO Ltd has suspended production at its Nova nickel operation in Western Australia for around four weeks after a fire damaged its power station over the weekend, the miner said on Monday.

The fire caused "extensive damage" to the engine room of the power station and while there were no injuries, restoration of full power supply is expected to take about four weeks, the company said in a filing to the Australian stock exchange.

Production is now likely to fall by 12 per cent to 23,000 tonnes of nickel while production costs rise by 5 per cent to A$3.0/lb, according to an estimate by analyst Dylan Kelly at broker Ord Minnett. Nova produced 26,675 tonnes of nickel in the last financial year.