As an example, a smelter that operates half the year takes twice as much capital to produce the same throughput as one that operates year round.

That’s before we get into all of the reasons that seasonal labor is undesirable, or how much additional warehouse capacity would be required to stockpile the metal which will needed over the unoperational months, or the raw material being stockpiled while it’s unable to be processed, or the impact on just in time supply chains, etc.