Going for Gold

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This article was published 21/08/2021 (1631 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s bling-bling-bling at Snow Lake, Manitoba.

Hudbay Minerals told the Free Press the company achieved its first gold pour at a newly-refurbished mill in the small town last week, located about 685 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

The gold production is happening at New Britannia mill, which will process ore from Hudbay’s Lalor mine in Snow Lake — the only such facility across the province prospecting gold currently.

It’s the kind of development that’s a boon for the local job market and Canada’s mining industry at large, said Hudbay president and chief executive officer Peter Kukielski in an interview.

“The best part is, it’s even ahead of our timeline to get this done by the end of 2021,” Kukielski said.

“We’re now marking the important transition to make the Lalor mine a primarily and predominantly gold operation. It’s a whole new picture of employment, especially when considering how much of our business actually is in Manitoba.”

A vast bulk of Hudbay’s history has revolved around its mining in Flin Flon. It’s where the company first found its roots.

Now, however, it operates in other parts of Manitoba and Peru; and has even been building a copper mine in southern Arizona. It also has exploration projects in Chile and elsewhere in the U.S., with a head office in Toronto.

“During the pandemic, our Manitoba staff has just been so very resilient, particularly during the second wave and third,” Kukielski said. “This type of news is incredibly great to hear, as we’re nearing the tail end of this crisis.”

COVID-19 cases at Hudbay’s Flin Flon and Snow Lake operations climbed just before the summer, with at least 16 employees testing positive for the virus at a peak in early April this year. The outbreak led to a brief shutdown at the Stall mill in Snow Lake, which reopened by mid-April, with further measures in place including rapid testing and more plexiglass barriers.

“We obviously had some incidents ourselves with the virus like so many other places of work, and I mean, overall the job market had issues, too; even if they didn’t correlate to the mining industry,” Kukielski said. “But every step of the way, it was all managed tremendously with the right protocols in tune with the health authorities.”

Built in 1948, the New Britannia mill in Snow Lake has long been an important site for mining in the region, where that sector is the primary driver of revenue and jobs.

But by 2005, the original mill went out of operation after displaying several issues, including 350,000 square- feet of asbestos contamination.

This past June, a refurbishment project was commissioned by Hudbay from demolition firm Rakowski Cartage & Wrecking. They mechanically removed all the asbestos and 60,000 tons of contaminated soil, while also processing more than 3,000 tons of scrap metal.

Activity at the site started again in July. And on August 11, it achieved its first gold pour.

Kukielski said his company is also completing the construction of a new copper flotation facility at New Britannia, on track to begin processing in the fourth quarter of 2021.

That means after completion, Hudbay’s annual gold production in Manitoba is expected to increase to over 180,000 ounces during the first six years of operation alone.

The updated plant comes with new crushers, a screen deck, thickener for the copper concentrate, flotation circuit, acid wash vessel, filter press, reagent packages, lime silo, instrumentation systems, transformers and an emergency generator.

“The easy question at the moment is about the future of gold,” Kukielski said. “And we’re glad we’re seeing this development directly about that, because currently, no one is necessarily worried in the industry about gold as a mining resource.”

Still, there are other worries for delivering crucial materials that cloud Kukielski’s head, like copper shortages and the volatility of government response to climate change solutions.

“Time will tell how things go,” he said. “For now, there is quite a life of mining ahead of us, which is urgent and much-needed around the world. And it’s especially true for Manitoba.”

temur.durrani@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @temurdur