ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥

The decision not to use that equipment was the major factor triggering an $11.8 million third-quarter loss for Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals Inc., the company says.

The company says what it calls a $34.5 million “impairment loss� reflects the difference in this equipment’s current market value and what it was thought to be worth when Hudbay predecessor Augusta Resource Corp. originally purchased or ordered it.

The mine is being planned for the Santa Rita Mountains southeast of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥. Although Hudbay hopes to start construction next year and open in 2018, the timetable isn’t certain due to public and agency opposition and concern about the project’s environmental impacts.

Hudbay carried out a friendly takeover of Augusta in 2014 for $555 million.

The company determined during the second and third quarters of 2015 that certain equipment chosen by Augusta Resource Corp. is unsuitable to achieve the mine’s objectives, Hudbay says.

Different equipment will better meet Rosemont’s objectives while allowing Hudbay to still meet its commitments made while seeking permits for the $1.5 billion mine from state and federal agencies, the company says.

The result:

• Hudbay won’t take some equipment Augusta has ordered but never had delivered to the mine site.
• Other equipment that has been delivered may be sold off, a Hudbay spokesman says.
• It’s not clear what would happen to unused equipment that’s not sold, said

• Scott Brubacher

• , Hudbay’s corporate communications director.

The equipment was going to be used as components of a huge grinding mill planned for the mine site, Brubacher said. At such a mill, pieces of previously crushed rock containing copper ore are milled to make them smaller for processing into copper concentrate.

The company’s $11.8 million third-quarter loss reflects a big change from the third quarter of 2014, when it reported $46 million in profit. Hudbay has lost $76 million through September 2015, compared to a $21.7 million profit for the same period of 2014.

The third quarter of 2015 also would have been profitable without the losses tied to the Rosemont grinding mill equipment, Hudbay says.

Operating cash flows rose 559 percent to $79.9 million for the three months ending Sept. 30, 2015, compared to the same period of 2014.

The increase was caused by significant growth in production and sales of most metals after Hudbay’s Constancia Mine in Peru achieved commercial production at the end of April 2015, the company said in a news release.

Metals production increases included 389 percent for copper, 329 percent for silver, 45 percent for gold and 7 percent for zinc.

Total revenue for the company rose from $170 million in the third quarter of 2014 to $269 million in the third quarter of 2015.

At the same time, the company has had to deal with mounting debt and, like the rest of the industry, declining copper prices.

In August, it increased what it calls its corporate revolving credit “facility� from $300 million to $400 million. That came after the company had increased that line of credit from $100 million to $300 million back in March.

The increased line of credit is aimed at providing the company with additional capital as the Constancia Mine reaches full production, Hudbay said in its third-quarter financial statement. As of Sept. 30, the company had drawn on $214 million of that credit package.

Hudbay’s share price on the New York Stock Exchange closed at $4.26 Friday, up more than a quarter from a week ago but down from prices exceeding $5 a share a month ago.

At the start of 2015, its stock was selling at about $8 per share; that price has tumbled with the decline in copper prices in recent months. But it is still better than the price of barely $3.60 a share at the end of September.