Kinross Gold suspends work at Tasiast mine in Mauritania, shares dive

Shares in Canadian miner Kinross Gold's (TSX:G) (NYSE:KGC) were hit Monday by the company’s decision to halt operations at its Tasiast mine in Mauritania following the West African country order to expatriates whose work permits were invalid to stop working.

The stock was down 3.6% pre-market in New York and 4.2% in Toronto on reports that Kinross, the world’s fifth largest gold producer, had left only a handful of people at the site for basic equipment maintenance.

Kinross has left only a handful of people at the site for basic equipment maintenance.

The move comes barely a week after unionized workers ended an 18-day strike as the company agreed to begin talks on a collective pay agreement.

Nearly all the mine’s 1,041 permanent staff took part in the stoppage.

In March, Kinross approved a $300 million first-phase expansion to double Tasiast's production and slash its production costs

The mine, which produced 219,045 of gold equivalent ounces (6.2 tonnes) in 2015, was once the world’s third-largest, but production has suffered from last year's falling price of gold and several stoppages over pay and working conditions.

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