CIM Magazine September/October 2025

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2025 • SEPTEMBRE/OCTOBRE 2025 MAGAZINE.CIM.ORG

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Discovery to production timelines are stubbornly long. The demand for critical minerals is only growing. Should the industry re-imagine mine planning and design?

By Tijana Mitrovic

Different by design

The world’s first greenfield in-situ copper recovery operation is set to produce first copper by the end of the year

By Ailbhe Goodbody

mine airflow

Advancements in ventilation technologies are reshaping underground mining for safety, efficiency and cost savings

By Mehanaz Yakub

9 The best in new technology

Compiled by Ashley Fish-Robertson Developments

10 Drillers rescued at Red Chris

By Ashley Fish-Robertson

11 Canada and Northwest Territories launch drill core scan project

By Ashley Fish-Robertson

14 New mining engineering program to launch in Nova Scotia

By Kelsey Rolfe

18 Nanotechnology start-up focuses on brines with low lithium concentration

By Sara King-Abadi

23 Only relevant and reliable historical information should be part of your technical disclosure

By

James

Whyte and Craig Waldie

24 Canadians need more publicly accessible information about the origins and processes behind the materials we use every day

By Donna Beneteau and Bruce Downing

Indigenous participation in mining

26 Taykwa Tagamou Nation’s $20 million investment into Canada Nickel is the largest of its kind in Canada

By Tijana Mitrovic

Risk management

28 The mining industry is undergoing significant digital transformation, but new technologies can also increase vulnerability to cybersecurity threats

By Lynn Greiner

30 The mining industry’s response to the enduring challenge of driving down the rate of fatalities and serious injuries

By Rosalind Stefanac

32 Forsite Fire’s Andy Low explains how wildfires can impact mine sites and why comprehensive mitigation planning is key to long-term resilience

By Mehanaz Yakub

CIM news

45 We are profiling CIM-Bedford Canadian Young Mining Leaders Award winners to learn how they are shaping the future of the industry. Meet Annabelle Rioux

By Tijana Mitrovic

46 Norman B. Keevil Jr. has created an endowment in his brothers’ names to help Indigenous students pursue a career in mining

By Michele Beacom

47 A great turnout for COM & LightMAT 2025

Mining the archives

64 A look at the development of Saskatchewan’s first uranium mining region in Beaverlodge

By Ailbhe Goodbody

54 Table des matières

54 Lettre de l’éditeur

56 Mot de la présidente

57 Ressources Winsome résilie l’option sur la mine Renard Par Ashley Fish-Robertson

Gestion des risques

59 Andy Low de Forsite Fire explique l’incidence des incendies de forêt sur les sites miniers et l’importance des programmes d’atténuation exhaustifs pour la résilience à long terme

Par Mehanaz Yakub

Art and industry or, How I spent my summer vacation

In June, I picked up a copy of Vaclav Smil’s How the World Really Works. The jacket copy is almost disingenuous about what is inside, calling it “an essential analysis of the modern science and technology that shape our twenty-first century lives,” which makes sense, because “why we ought to be more thoughtful about our reliance on crude oil, concrete, steel and fertilizers” would be a much tougher sell.

With Smil’s book rattling around in my head, I dashed off to Spain while the rest of the editorial team had their shoulders to the wheel preparing this issue. (If you have the good fortune to reach 50, why not celebrate? It will happen only once after all.) Which is why, when I made one of my first stops at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, not only mortality but the material reality of things was front of mind.

Most people will recognize this contemporary art gallery by sight, with its massive undulating walls clad in titanium (ore mined in Russia, processed and metal rolled in the United States.) A recently created panoramic audio-visual installation occupied a large room inside. It was an artificial intelligence (AI) spectacle, where a flowing display of designs, textures and colours had been generated using a database of images that were added to a “large architectural model.” This wraparound light projection was complemented by AI-generated audio.

“Built upon ethically sourced data and powered by sustainable computing practices,” the curator noted, “the installation reflects a conscientious approach to digital creation, where innovation and responsibility go hand in hand.” By all measures, it was up-to-the-minute contemporary. It also drew the largest crowd.

Smil’s concern is that, in our post-industrial, service-based economy, we have lost sight of the fact that, while software may

Editor-in-chief Ryan Bergen, rbergen@cim.org

be endlessly diverting, it is fossil fuels and carbon-intensive material production that help the billions of us humans meet our fundamental needs. Ignorance of this makes it possible to push the idea that net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the next 25 years is possible without being hugely disruptive, while at the same time making it more difficult to have productive conversations on the best ways to trim our massive carbon diet.

Thus, the work that most thoroughly rose to the moment was a series of permanent sculpture installations made of great planes of weathered steel. Recognizing that Bilbao was once a major shipbuilding centre, the nature of the material was as fundamental to the experience as the flowing designs the artist worked the metal into.

Where the framing of the AI exhibit emphasized its lack of a physical footprint, the write-up accompanying the steel sculptures detailed the millennia-long relationship between the region and its iron deposits. Housed within the Guggenheim collection made possible through wealth amassed from mining and metal processing, it had a conscientiousness about its origins that we would do well to take seriously.

Ryan Bergen, Editor-in-chief editor@cim.org

Managing editor Michele Beacom, mbeacom@cim.org

Senior editor Ailbhe Goodbody, agoodbody@cim.org

Special projects editor Silvia Pikal

Contributing editors Kelsey Rolfe; Mehanaz Yakub, myakub@cim.org

Staff writer Ashley Fish-Robertson, afrobertson@cim.org

Contributors Donna Beneteau, Bruce Downing, Lynn Greiner, Sara King-Abadi, Tijana Mitrovic, Rosalind Stefanac, Craig Waldie, James Whyte

Editorial advisory board Mohammad Babaei Khorzhoughi, Vic Pakalnis, Steve Rusk, Nathan Stubina

Translations Karen Rolland, karen.g.rolland@gmail.com

Layout and design Clò Communications Inc., communications.clo@gmail.com

Published 8 times a year by: Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum 1040 – 3500 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West Westmount, QC H3Z 3C1 Tel.: 514.939.2710; Fax: 514.939.2714 www.cim.org; magazine@cim.org

Advertising Senior Account Executives Marlene Mignardi, mmignardi@cim.org, 416-843-1961 Dinah Quattrin, dquattrin@cim.org, 416-993-9636

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Copyright©2025. All rights reserved. ISSN 1718-4177. Publications Mail No. 09786. Postage paid at CPA Saint-Laurent, QC.

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This issue’s cover The production test facility wellfield at Florence Copper. Courtesy of Taseko Mines

The paradox of rising metal prices

The old adage of “buy low, sell high” became widely popularized in the stock market boom of the early 20th century. The issue with this concept in a cyclical industry is how to know when prices have peaked to make sound decisions on capital investment and project development. The mining industry is notoriously cyclical, and the recent outperformance of gold has shone a spotlight on the potential for large-magnitude price increases.

The price of gold has experienced a meteoric rise over the past year, with an almost US$1,000 per ounce price increase from August 2024 compared to the same month in 2025, hitting a record high of US$3,500 per ounce in April. The World Gold Council attributed the price increase to the global macro-economic uncertainty around tariffs and geopolitical tensions, supported by stable interest rates and a weaker U.S. dollar. The question many investors are asking is, how high will it climb? I won’t attempt to predict if or when gold prices will moderate. However, the recent trend highlights the challenges with the cyclical nature of metal prices and how quickly prices may rise…or decline.

Nickel prices also experienced a similar roller coaster ride recently, giving investors and companies a more traditional thrill, or terrifying experience, with a return to the bottom from the crest of the peak. After a price spike in the spring of 2024—supported by the expectation of supply/demand tightness due to the shift to electrification and battery storage, as well as bans on the import of Russian nickel into exchanges—a quick supply

The question many investors are asking is, how high will the price of gold climb?

response, primarily from Indonesia, resulted in prices reaching a five-year low in April 2025, sending a booming industry into care and maintenance. Further, weaker-than-expected electric vehicle adoption rates, unprofitable production and slowerthan-anticipated stainless steel growth have plagued the metal.

The resource industry is characterized by expensive and long-duration capital investment. In this uncertain pricing environment, companies are forced to make decisions based on longterm price assumptions that have diverged from analyst and internal forecasts. The investor anticipation for merger and acquisition activity is high, yet management teams have learned lessons the hard way that investors do not like when companies buy high and shareholder value is eroded. Boards of directors are paying close attention to capital allocation and investment returns when evaluating potential transactions.

The economics of new development projects are calculated using an estimate of long-term future metal prices, which remain on their roller coaster ride. Previous projects that were considered uneconomic at lower prices are starting to be reconsidered using higher long-term metal price assumptions, yet how do companies manage the risk surrounding their pricing assumptions to ensure value creation for their stakeholders?

In our business, increasing metal prices are welcomed, to make up for the prolonged periods of pricing drought. However, management teams face increasing pressure to bring on critical minerals supply in this current volatile and uncertain environment, without pricing certainty. This paradox is not new to the resource industry. But as investment decisions are contemplated for new development projects to satisfy critical minerals and metals demand, the question remains: what long-term price should we use?

Candace MacGibbon President, CIM president@cim.org

Courtesy of Candace MacGibbon

Virtual training for safer scaling

Underground OEM Fletcher and simulation training solution developer Simformotion recently introduced the High Reach Scaler simulator, which provides underground mining operators with a realistic virtual training environment for learning how to safely remove loose or unstable rock and debris from tunnel walls and roofs. The simulator features Fletcher controls and several exercises covering machine inspection, start-up and shut-down procedures, scaling and tram operations. With virtual reality technology and a motion system, operators can gain depth perception and hands-on experience without real life risks. The integrated SimU Campus software can track users’ sessions and produce performance reports. Paired with the SimScholars online curriculum, the system offers a comprehensive, flexible training solution that can help mining companies develop skilled operators while reducing safety risks.

Compact truck for small drifts

Durable receivers

Septentrio recently released the AsteRx RB3 and RBi3 global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers, with the RBi3 featuring both GNSS and inertial navigation system (INS) capabilities. The receivers are engineered for highprecision real-time kinematic positioning in demanding surface mining environments. Designed for easy installation on machine exteriors or chassis, these receivers can withstand shocks, vibrations, extreme temperatures and corrosive conditions, making them ideal for heavy machinery. Delivering centimetre-level accuracy and reliable positioning using multi-frequency, multi-constellation GNSS tracking, the combination of GNSS and INS for the RBi3 provides redundance of positioning, dead reckoning and improved positioning integrity—all critical for safe autonomous operations.

Epiroc’s Minetruck MT22 is a compact, 22-tonne underground mining truck tailored for small drift sizes that is a successor to the MT2200, the company’s smallest underground truck model. It has the same exterior design as the MT2200 but features several upgrades, such as the option of a Cummins QSL9 Stage V engine and an advanced after-treatment system that significantly reduces harmful emissions—such as particulate matter and nitrogen oxides—and improves underground air quality. The Stage V engine also cuts fuel consumption by five per cent compared to previous generations, lowers noise and extends oil change intervals from 500 to 1,000 hours, minimizing maintenance requirements and reducing operational downtime. The MT22 can support renewable hydrotreated vegetable oil fuel, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants. Epiroc also introduced several safety enhancements to the MT22, including an integrated loadweighing system and a three-point seatbelt.

Compiled by Ashley Fish-Robertson

Courtesy of Septentrio

Courtesy of Simformotion

Courtesy of Epiroc

Developments

Drillers rescued at Red Chris

By Ashley Fish-Robertson

Three Hy-Tech Drilling workers were safely rescued on July 24, after being trapped underground for more than 60 hours at Newmont’s Red Chris coppergold mine in northern British Columbia.

(continued on page 11)

From left to right: Barry Nabess (director of environment, health and safety), Kevin Coumbs (driller), Jesse Chubaty (driller), Darien Maduke (driller’s helper) and Dwayne Ross (president of Hy-Tech).

The workers—Kevin Coumbs, a driller from Ontario; Jesse Chubaty, a driller from Manitoba; and Darien Maduke, a driller’s helper from B.C.—were caught underground following two fall-ofground incidents on July 22.

“We are relieved to share that all three individuals are safe, and in good health and spirits,” Newmont said in a July 25 statement. “This was a carefully planned and meticulously executed rescue plan. Kevin, Darien and Jesse demonstrated the utmost dedication to our

safety procedures, adhering to protocols for more than 60 hours underground.”

Newmont’s rescue operation team used specialized drones to assess the underground geotechnical conditions and a remote-controlled scoop to clear a massive rockfall, estimated at 20 to 30 metres long and seven to eight metres high.

Production at the site halted on July 23 to allow full focus on rescue efforts and to restore communication with the trapped workers.

At the start of the incident, the trapped workers were more than 500 metres below the affected zone and were able to move to a designated refuge station before a subsequent fall-of-ground collapse blocked the access route. The self-contained refuge bay was equipped with adequate food, water and ventilation to support their extended stay.

Newmont said that it would conduct a comprehensive investigation into the incident and share the lessons learned with the industry. CIM

Canada and Northwest Territories launch drill core scan project

Core samples re-examined through the pilot will contribute to future digital core library

By Ashley Fish-Robertson

The Canadian and Northwest Territories governments are launching a pilot project to re-examine historic drill samples with artificial intelligence (AI) and digital core scanning technologies.

The project, first announced on July 14, will target the scanning and analysis of archived core samples from the Northwest Territories Geological Survey’s extensive collection. Its main goal is to pinpoint high-potential critical mineral zones within the Slave Geological Province, a vast, largely unexplored region considered to be one of Canada’s most promising areas for lithium, copper, cobalt and rare earth elements.

The area spans roughly 190,000 square kilometres in eastern N.W.T. and northwestern Nunavut, extending from Great Slave Lake to the Coronation Gulf in the Arctic Ocean. According to the N.W.T. government, the territory is the world’s third-largest diamond producer and holds over 12 per cent of the Earth’s known bismuth reserves.

This pilot project is part of a broader initiative to advance critical minerals exploration, with the re-examined core samples contributing to a future digital core library that will digitize geological drill cores from across Canada, making them more accessible nationwide.

“ By modernizing how we analyze and share geological data, we’re opening the door to new exploration, new partnerships and new economic oppor-

This pilot project will apply digital analysis to archived drill cores, reducing the need for new drilling and promoting sustainable exploration.

tunities,” said Caitlin Cleveland, minister of industry, tourism and investment for the territorial government, in a press release.

Devin Baines, senior communications advisor for Natural Resources Canada, told CIM Magazine in a written statement that AI tools will help to

Courtesy of Gold Terra

detect previously overlooked mineral signatures, re-evaluate historic discoveries, and highlight new targets for critical minerals. Combined with AI analytics, he said that the pilot project will aim to use high-resolution digital scanning, such as core imagery and hyperspectral imaging, instead of relying on traditional manual visual and logbased methods.

High-resolution digital scanning will allow for automated, quantitative mineral mapping of entire core lengths, enabling detection beyond manual inspection, Baines said. He said details on the format, availability and accessibility of the resulting data are still being finalized.

“The intent will be to have data from this initiative integrated into a centralized digital platform, forming the foundation of a forthcoming Canadian Digital Core Library, which will reduce barriers and support exploration across Canada,” he said. “This pilot will act as a proof of concept to show how archived core data can be digitally transformed, enhanced and utilized for machine learning, and made accessible through a centralized platform.”

Another key goal of the project is to reduce further land disturbance. Baines explained that by digitally analyzing existing drill cores instead of commissioning new drilling, the initiative lowers environmental impacts, minimizes disruption to sensitive northern lands and allows for sustainable exploration using existing archives.

Beyond the core

While the digital core scanning project focuses on unlocking mineral potential using existing data, Caroline Wawzonek, the territory’s minister of infrastructure, energy and supply chains stressed in the press release that infrastructure is equally critical to realizing these opportunities.

“That is why we’re advancing the Mackenzie Valley Highway (MVH) and the Arctic Security Corridor,” she added.

The MVH project aims to replace approximately 320 kilometres of the seasonal Mackenzie Valley Winter Road by extending all-season road access from the end of Highway 1 to the Sahturegion communities of Wrigley, Tulita and Norman Wells. It would also enhance transportation to NorZinc’s Prairie Creek zinc-lead-silver project,

situated about 200 kilometres west of Fort Simpson.

The MVH is currently undergoing an environmental assessment and consultation with local Indigenous communities. Once the assessment is complete and following final ministerial approvals and a formal decision by the N.W.T government

Denison secures environmental approval for Wheeler River

Denison Mines received provincial environmental assessment (EA) approval for its flagship Wheeler River uranium project in northern Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin, advancing what could be Canada’s first in-situ recovery (ISR) uranium mine.

Denison president and CEO David Cates said in an Aug. 5 press release that with the approval, the company has cleared one of the final regulatory milestones to begin constructing its Phoenix mine, “which is on track to become Canada’s next new large-scale uranium mine.”

Wheeler River, the largest undeveloped uranium project in the eastern Athabasca Basin, includes the highgrade Phoenix and Gryphon uranium deposits, which Denison discovered in 2008 and 2014, respectively. According to a 2023 feasibility study, the Phoenix project has a post-tax net present value of $1.56 billion and could generate a return of 90 per cent at capital costs of around $419 million. The mine is expected to operate for 10 years.

The project hosts proven reserves of 6,300 tonnes grading 24.5 per cent uranium oxide for 3.4 million pounds, and probable reserves of 212,700 tonnes at 11.4 per cent uranium oxide for 53.3 million pounds.

As part of its plan to streamline regulatory approvals, Denison submitted the provincial EA for final approval in late 2024 after completing several key milestones in the federal review process. The company has finished the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s detailed technical review and received its final environmental impact statement.

Denison also announced the closing of a US$345 million convertible senior

to advance the project, a final construction decision is anticipated in late 2027 or early 2028.

The Arctic Security Corridor, involving the construction of an all-season road from Yellowknife to Grays Bay, Nunavut, is also undergoing an environmental assessment. CIM

note on Aug. 15 to fund the further the development of Wheeler River.

The company still needs to secure a provincial pollutant control facility permit, federal EA approval and a federal licence to prepare the site for construction. Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission hearings on the federal EA and licence are scheduled for October and December this year, potentially paving the way for a final investment decision in the first half of 2026.

– Ashley Fish-Robertson

Torex Gold to acquire Prime Mining

Torex Gold Resources will buy Prime Mining in an approximately $449 million all-share transaction, the companies announced July 28. The deal will add Prime’s Los Reyes gold-silver project in Mexico to Torex’s expanding portfolio of assets across the country.

Under the terms of the agreement, Prime Mining shareholders will receive 0.06 Torex shares for each Prime share they own. This exchange ratio represents an 18.5 per cent premium to Prime’s most recent closing price and a 32.4 per cent premium to its 30-day volume-weighted average. Upon completion of the transaction, Prime shareholders will own approximately 10.7 per cent of the combined company.

The companies expect to finalize the deal later this year, subject to shareholder, court and regulatory approvals, including Mexican antitrust clearance.

The work camp at Denison Mines’ Wheeler River project in Saskatchewan.

Courtesy of Denison Mines

Prime’s Los Reyes project is 43 kilometres southeast of Cosalá in Mexico’s Sinaloa state, encompassing a contiguous land package of 6,273 hectares. It is situated within the Guadalupe De Los Reyes mining district, known for its significant mining activity dating back to the 1700s.

The indicated mineral resources for the Los Reyes project are 49 million tonnes grading 0.95 grams per tonne of gold, containing approximately 1.49 million ounces of gold, and 34.2 grams per tonne of silver, containing approximately 54 million ounces of silver.

“The Los Reyes Project represents a unique opportunity for the Torex team to develop a high-quality asset with the potential for a high margin, low capital, and long-life operation in a jurisdiction that we know very well,” said Jody Kuzenko, president and CEO of Torex, in a press release.

The deal comes on the heels of Torex’s late-June, $36 million acquisition of Vancouver-headquartered junior Reyna Silver, which allowed the company to scoop up Reyna’s exploration projects,

including the Batopilas and Guigui silver projects in Mexico.

Kuzenko said both acquisitions support the company’s strategy to “system-

Shaping a sustainable future.

atically build a diversified, Americasfocused precious metals producer with a portfolio of producing, development and exploration stage assets.”

The Future of Mining Challenge is a catalyst for industry-wide innovation. At Wheaton, we are committed to supporting the mining industry as a strategic partner in producing some of the world’s most important commodities.

For the 2025/2026 Challenge, US$1 million will be awarded to a cleantech venture with innovative technology that seeks to advance sustainable water management in mining. Learn more at www.futureofmining.ca.

The Los Reyes gold-silver project in Mexico.

Courtesy

Torex currently has several operations in Mexico. The company is focused on the exploration, development and operation

of its Morelos Property in Mexico, which comprises the El Limón Guajes and Media Luna mines. Covering 29,000 hectares, the

property is situated in the Guerrero gold belt, roughly 180 kilometres southwest of Mexico City. – Ashley Fish-Robertson

New mining engineering program to launch in Nova Scotia

Saint Mary’s University, filling a vacuum left by Dalhousie, promises to graduate a new type of mining engineer

By Kelsey Rolfe

Mining engineering education in Nova Scotia is about to get a second life, as Saint Mary’s University (SMU) in Halifax prepares to launch a new resource engineering program to fill the gap left when Dalhousie University shuttered its program.

Don MacNeil, director of the engineering program at SMU, told CIM Magazine in an interview that the new program will graduate “a new generation of engineers.”

The program is meant to teach students essential technical skills as well as soft skills including project management, financial analysis, engagement with First Nations communities and an understanding of the full life cycle of a mine, from project proposal through to its closure and legacy.

“We’re looking to produce engineers with a much more well-rounded approach —through experience, familiarity and education—to a project, as opposed to just the technical skills that might have been focused on earlier,” MacNeil said.

SMU currently offers a two-year engineering diploma, from which point students can transfer to Dalhousie or other universities to complete two more years of study in a specialized area, such as civil or mechanical engineering. SMU’s engineering department is currently in the project proposal and development stage for its own final two-year program, with a 16-month co-op in between years, that would give students a bachelor’s degree in resource engineering.

MacNeil said the department finalized its proposed curriculum in midAugust, which it expects to submit to the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission for provincial government approval in the fall, and to Engineers Canada for program accreditation in

2026. He anticipates the university could have its first cohort of third-year resource engineering students by September 2026, and its first graduates of the program by April 2028.

Students will be able to choose a specialization in mining engineering, or a renewable energy engineering specialization that would prepare students for working on projects such as wind farms or battery development. Students in the mining stream will have technical classes, as well as full courses dedicated to project approval and First Nations engagement, the environmental impact of projects and more. MacNeil noted that other mining engineering programs sometimes cover these topics as a single “mining and society” course or as modules within other courses.

He said the engineering school heard consistently from members of industry that they were looking for more wellrounded mining engineering graduates.

“They said, ‘we don’t really need an engineer with an in-depth knowledge in any given area.’ But they did want the engineers with an appreciation for, or an understanding of, these other topics.”

A critical moment for mining education

The new program is coming at an ideal time. The federal and provincial governments are seeking to make Canada a critical minerals powerhouse; in Nova Scotia, the Progressive Conservative government lifted a long-time ban on uranium mining this year and also put $1 million of funding from Natural Resources Canada towards studying how the province’s critical minerals can be developed and creating a model of critical mineral potential in the province.

At the same time, the industry is facing a looming workforce shortage. According to the Mining Industry Human Resources Council, one in every five min-

The engineering building at Saint Mary's University in Halifax.

Courtesy of Saint Mary’s University

ing workers was 55 or older in 2023. “With the rising demand for critical minerals, one thing is clear—Canada’s mining industry needs a fresh influx of talent,” the council said in its mining talent pipeline report.

When Dalhousie shut down its program, MacNeil said it paved the way for SMU to create its own. The university had a long-standing agreement that it would not impede students from going to Dalhousie after they completed their diploma at SMU.

“This was always an idea, and always something that we floated. And then with Dal’s suspension of their program, it basically freed up that opportunity,” MacNeil said.

Dalhousie’s engineering school announced in 2019 it would eliminate its mineral resource engineering program. The university’s final graduating class crossed the convocation stage in 2024.

Dalhousie’s engineering school declined CIM Magazine’s request for comment.

Dalhousie’s program dates back to the dawn of the 20th century. When the Nova Scotia Technical College opened in

1907, it started with four engineering disciplines, including mining. According to the Mining Society of Nova Scotia, the first graduating class, in 1910, consisted of two mining engineering students, and seven from other disciplines. In 1980, the college was renamed the Technical College of Nova Scotia, and in 1997 it amalgamated with Dalhousie. In total, the program graduated 1,073 mineral resource engineers over its 114-year life.

With the closure of Dalhousie’s program, there are currently 10 mining engineering programs in Canada, and none in Atlantic Canada (there are also none in the territories).

Don Jones, a former Dalhousie professor who is advising SMU on its curriculum development, told CIM Magazine that small class sizes are common for mining engineering programs; his survey of Canadian mining engineering schools, presented at the 2023 CIM Convention, found that all mining engineering schools on average did not have enough students to meet their full enrolment capacity.

Engineers Canada also reported in 2020 that mining engineering programs had seen a 33.5 per cent decline in enrolment since 2016.

Dalhousie’s program was among the more well-attended while it was operating, Jones said. His survey found that between 2009 and 2019, Dalhousie had an average undergraduate class size of 20.9 students. That number rose to an average 30.9-student class size when looking at the 10 years from 2010 to 2019, and to 39.5 students per class in the fiveyear period between 2015 to 2019. Its numbers after the closure announcement were notably smaller.

In comparison, the three most wellattended undergraduate programs had similar class sizes. Between 2021 and 2024, the University of British Columbia graduated between 28 and 35 undergraduate mining engineers per year, Queen’s University graduated between 12 and 43 per year, and the University of Alberta graduated between 16 and 37 per year, according to Jones’ presentation.

MacNeil said SMU could economically run the program with the same class sizes

as Dalhousie had. The university is planning to draw on current lecturers from other faculties, including environmental science, geology and business, though it does plan to hire some new professors. It is also able to integrate existing courses: MacNeil estimated that about half of the

Taseko reports stronger economics for Yellowhead project

Taseko Mines recently released a technical report for its Yellowhead copper project in central B.C., announcing improved economics for a 90,000-tonneper-day open-pit operation with a mine life of 25 years.

The Yellowhead copper project is located around 150 kilometres north of Kamloops. Taseko, which also operates the Gibraltar copper and molybdenum mine near Williams Lake, B.C., acquired the project for $13 million in shares in February 2019 as part of its acquisition of Yellowhead Mining Inc.

178 million

According to the new technical report, which summarizes engineering and costs estimates at the pre-feasibility level, the project has an initial capital cost of $2 billion, an after-tax net present value (NPV) of $2 billion at an eight per cent discount rate and an internal rate of return (IRR) of 21 per cent, based on metal prices of US$4.25 per pound for copper.

The previous technical report from January 2020 calculated the project’s cost at $1.3 billion, the NPV as $700 million after-tax with a 14 per cent IRR and an anticipated copper price of US$3.10 per pound of copper.

The Yellowhead project is expected to produce an average of 178 million pounds of copper annually at cash costs of US$1.90 per pound. Over the entire life of the mine, production is expected to reach 4.4 billion pounds of copper, 282,000 ounces of gold and 19.4 million ounces of silver.

“This new technical report establishes Yellowhead as a world-class copper project in a tier one jurisdiction,”

courses that would fall under the mining program are already operating.

Because the new resource engineering program will be a key focus for the department, he said he believes it will be able to attract more students than universities where mining engineering is one of many

offered disciplines. MacNeil said SMU is planning to host guest speakers from the industry and have mine site field trips for first- and second-year students. “That’s going to give the exposure that we think is going to convince enough students to say, ‘this is something I want to do.’” CIM

said Stuart McDonald, president and CEO of Taseko Mines, in a July 10 press release. “With strengthening copper prices, the project economics have improved significantly since the 2020 technical report. The project now has a $2 billion NPV and the potential to become one of the largest copper mines in North America.”

McDonald stated that, over the next few years, alongside the permitting process, Taseko will also be advancing engineering, community engagement, copper offtake discussions and project financing initiatives.

During operations, the project is expected to support approximately 590 direct jobs and around 1,120 indirect and induced jobs locally.

Taseko said it expects the project will be eligible for the federal Clean Technology Manufacturing Investment Tax Credit, which the company estimated would result in about $540 million of qualifying initial capital costs being reimbursed in the first year of operations.

On July 8, Taseko also announced the formal commencement of the environmental assessment process for the Yellowhead project. This includes both the provincial and federal regulatory reviews, as well as the Simpcw Process, an Indigenous-led assessment. Addition-

ally, Taseko has signed a relationship negotiation agreement with the Simpcw First Nation to define their role in project oversight and planning, and to establish a long-term economic partnership.

– Ashley Fish-Robertson

Renard mine option terminated by Winsome Resources

Australian miner Winsome Resources withdrew its option agreement to acquire the Renard diamond mine in Quebec in late July, stepping back from a deal that was seen as key to accelerating lithium production at its nearby flagship Adina project by repurposing the Renard plant for lithium processing.

“While the decision to step back from the Renard option was not the outcome we had originally envisaged, it reflects the realities of current global market conditions,” said Chris Evans, managing director of Winsome Resources, in a written statement to CIM Magazine. “Importantly, it allows us to sharpen our focus on advancing our world-class Adina project.”

In a press release, the company cited falling lithium prices and broader macroeconomic headwinds as the reasoning behind terminating the

The Yellowhead copper project is located around 150 kilometres north of Kamloops and about 300 kilometres southeast of Taseko’s Gibraltar copper mine.

Courtesy of Taseko Mines

The Yellowhead project’s expected average annual copper production, in pounds

option, but said it remains focused on advancing Adina, and could revisit the purchase in the future.

“After having recently received the directive from the environmental authorities in Quebec, we can proceed on our pathway towards the environmental and social impact assessment [for Adina],” Evans added. “Recent weeks

have shown encouraging signs of a potential market rebound, and Winsome is positioning itself to take full advantage of improving conditions.”

The Renard site, roughly 60 kilometres south of Adina, was formerly owned by Stornoway Diamonds and holds the distinction of being Quebec’s first diamond mine. The site includes a process-

ing plant equipped with a dense media separation plant, ore sorting and a grinding circuit.

Winsome initially secured the exclusive option to acquire the site for $52 million in April 2024, with $4 million paid upfront and $1 million due at closing. The remaining amount was to be paid in instalments, and the latest extension of the option expired on Aug. 31.

It said in the press release that Renard remains “the most viable option in terms of operations, costs and logistics,” and said it would continue engaging with Stornoway, the provincial and federal governments and other stakeholders “to explore opportunities to work together regarding the synergies between the Adina and Renard projects.”

Construction of the Renard mine began in 2014, with commercial production commencing in 2017. However, facing operational and financial challenges amid mounting uncertainty in global diamond prices, Stornoway suspended operations in October 2023. The mine has remained on care and maintenance since. – Ashley Fish-Robertson

The past-producing Renard diamond mine (pictured above) is located approximately 60 kilometres from Winsome Resources’ Adina lithium project.

Courtesy of Stornoway Diamonds

Nanotechnology start-up focuses on brines with low lithium concentration

Pilot project targets produced water from oil and gas operations to generate revenue

By Sara King-Abadi

A Calgary-based nanotechnology company’s one-step, environmentally friendly lithium extraction pilot project, deployed in the field in July, is already showing promising results.

Litus has developed a pilot project consisting of a single modular unit that uses its LiNC direct lithium extraction (DLE) solution, which employs nanotechnology to selectively extract lithium from any type of source brine. It is achieving recovery rates of up to 99.5 per cent in lithium brines with concentrations as low as 30 parts per million (ppm). Currently, the lower end of economically viable lithium brine concentrations is around 50 ppm.

The efficacy is due to the “extreme” capabilities of the nanomaterials, the details of which are patented and cannot be disclosed, resulting in a single-step process with very little pretreatment, said Litus CEO and cofounder Ghada Nafie in an interview with CIM Magazine

Nafie, who holds a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of

In case you missed it, here’s some notable news since the last issue of CIM Magazine, which is just a sample of the news you’ll find in our weekly recap emailed to our newsletter subscribers.

Calgary, also credited the effectiveness of the unit to the robust quality of the nanomaterials, which can be reused. Litus built a manufacturing facility in Calgary in October 2023 to develop and manufacture the proprietary nanotechnology used by the unit.

“We’ve built a manufacturing facility to ensure the reliable supply of these nanomaterials to our customers,” said Nafie.

The location of the deployment, along with other fine details, is under a nondisclosure agreement; however, Nafie confirmed the pilot testing is with an energy company.

Traditional lithium brine extraction methods use evaporation and tend to be costly, time-consuming and can be harmful to the environment due to extensive land use and high water consumption. Recent DLE processes target source brines to remove lithium in a more environmentally friendly, faster and cost-efficient manner.

The pilot unit’s extraction process takes eight to 10 hours, Nafie said.

A team of researchers from the SETI Institute in the United States believe they may have identified a new iron sulfate mineral on Mars. Laboratory experiments indicate that the mineral—ferric hydroxysulfate— formed when hydrated ferrous sulfates were heated in conditions involving oxygen, with the reaction producing water. The transformation occurs only at temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Celsius, likely from volcanic activity or geothermal energy. Its distinctive crystal structure suggests it may be a previously unknown mineral, according to the researchers.

Northcliff Resources received $8.2 million from the federal government to advance its fully permitted Sisson tungsten-molybdenum project in New Brunswick in midAugust. Funds will be used to update the project’s 2013 feasibility study, complete engineering and support pre-construction work.

Traditional lithium brine evaporation processes can take up to two years.

Promising developments for the oil and gas industry

While the process has demonstrated consistent ability to extract lithium from all different source brines, it has stood out specifically for its ability to extract from low-concentration brines, Nafie said.

99.5%

The highest recovery rate Litus has recorded in lithium brines with concentrations as low as 30 parts per million

An Alberta Energy Regulator report on lithium potential in Alberta, published in June, noted that lithium has been found in oil and gas reservoirs since the early 1990s, and has been extracted from brine concentrations as low as 50 ppm.

“We particularly found ourselves in a bit of a niche market where we’re able to

Green Technology Metals has obtained two new 21-year mining leases for its Seymour lithium project, located around 230 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, Ontario, ensuring full lease coverage of the intended construction site. Issued by Ontario’s Ministry of Mines in August, the new leases complement the original mining lease secured in December 2023. The project will be subject solely to a provincial environmental assessment, bypassing a federal review under Canada’s Impact Assessment Act.

Frontier Lithium has launched a definitive feasibility study for its lithium conversion facility in Thunder Bay. The facility, which would be fed by Frontier’s Pakeagama lithium deposit, is expected to produce 20,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide annually, enough for 500,000 electric vehicle batteries. Frontier aims to have the study completed within 18 months. The project is majority-owned by Frontier, and Mitsubishi has a 7.5 per cent interest.

Developments

extract lithium from low-concentration sources with high efficiency and effectiveness, and we can do so in a profitable manner,” she said.

That is good news for regions such as North America and Europe, and in particular for the oil and gas industry, where operations tend to produce brine with low lithium concentrations as a byproduct.

The ability to extract lithium from oilfield brines that were previously considered uneconomical could mean a

The Metals Company released a technical report in August estimating there are more than 50 million tonnes of probable mineral reserves in deep-sea polymetallic nodules located in the Pacific Ocean’s Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ). In March, the Canadian miner began the process of seeking licences from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to explore and extract minerals from the CCZ. The company aims to begin production in the fourth quarter of 2027. TMC stated in a press release that the company’s prefeasibility study for the project “marks a worldfirst declaration of probable mineral reserves for deep-sea polymetallic nodules.”

McEwen Mining said it would acquire Canadian Gold in an all-share deal in late July, giving the company control of the Tartan Lake gold project near Flin Flon, Manitoba. McEwen chief owner Rob McEwen said he sees the potential to restart the past-producing Tartan in the near term. The deal, pending approval by the end of

diversified revenue stream for oil and gas companies, said Nafie.

“Right now, [for] all of these oil and gas companies, their produced water [a byproduct of oil and gas extraction] goes to waste,” she said. “We are working on, instead of [it] going to waste, actually monetizing some of that by extracting the lithium out of that low-concentration stream.”

Global demand for lithium has soared in recent years, due to its use as a key material for manufacturing recharge -

the year, will make Canadian Gold a McEwen subsidiary, with its shareholders owning 8.2 per cent of the combined company.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said the new major federal projects office and Indigenous advisory council will be established by early September, with the aim of speeding up project approvals across Canada. Carney made the announcement at a three-day gathering of provincial and territorial premiers in late July. At the same event, Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan signed a memorandum of understanding pledging to cooperate on building pipelines, railways and energy and trade infrastructure using Ontario steel, which will be essential for transporting the country’s critical minerals and oil and gas to new markets.

Nine Ontario First Nations filed for an injunction against Canada’s and Ontario’s major projects legislation in July, arguing the laws

able batteries. Electric vehicles, electronic devices and grid storage are responsible for 87 per cent of total demand for lithium, according to Natural Resources Canada.

Next steps

One of the perks of being a technology company is not having to navigate permitting and other red tape that falls onto producers. “We get in there and we integrate our technology to the brine source,” said Nafie.

After the several-months pilot phase, Litus plans to have larger, onsite units up and running commercially by 2028. Litus is supported by the National Research Council of Canada’s industrial research assistance program; the Mining Innovation Commercialization Accelerator; Emissions Reduction Alberta; Sustainable Development Technology Canada; Alberta Innovates; The Firehood, a network supporting women in technology; urban innovation hub MaRS; and cleantech innovation and adoption broker Foresight Canada.

While the pilot unit’s extraction process takes less than a day, the road to deployment has been nearly a decade in the making.

“It is one of the best and most satisfying feelings to actually have the chance as a researcher early on to develop something that I’m able to see in large scale,” said Nafie. “It’s incredible.” CIM

threaten their self-determination rights. The federal Bill C-5 allows Ottawa to fasttrack major projects, while Ontario’s Bill 5 lets the province override local laws in “special economic zones.” At a two-day summit with First Nations leaders in July, Carney vowed long-term prosperity for First Nations rights holders through major projects, but some Indigenous leaders criticized the rushed process and lack of meaningful engagement.

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Litus CEO and co-founder Ghada Nafie with the company’s pilot unit on-site in the field.

Courtesy

BHP’s Jansen project facing delays

The first phase of BHP’s Jansen potash project in Saskatchewan will cost up to 30 per cent more than initially planned and be delayed by a year, the company said on July 18.

Initial production from Jansen’s Phase 1 will be postponed to mid-2027 from its original late 2026 target, and BHP has increased the estimated capital expenditure from US$5.7 billion to between US$7 billion and US$7.4 billion.

“The estimated cost increase is driven by inflationary and real cost escalation pressures, design development and scope changes, and our current assessment of lower productivity outcomes over the construction period,” BHP said in its operational review for the year ending June 30, which was released on July 18.

In its annual report on Aug. 19, the company confirmed it is also delaying the first production from Jansen’s Phase 2 by two years from 2029 to 2031

as part of its regular review of capital expenditure plans, citing the possibility of increased potash supply entering the market in the medium term as the reason.

The construction of Jansen’s Phase 1 is now 68 per cent complete, and Phase 2 is 11 per cent complete. BHP reached the halfway mark for Phase 1 construction in July 2024.

The halfway point of construction on Phase 1 of the Jansen project in Saskatchewan was declared in July 2024.

Courtesy of BHP

In 2023, BHP approved a US$4.9 billion investment for Phase 2 but has spent just US$400 million to date. The company said it plans to share an update on the revised capital spending

From the wire

Compiled by Ashley Fish-Robertson

Rio Tinto appointed Simon Trott as the company’s new CEO, succeeding Jakob Stausholm, who had led the company since 2021 and whose unexpected departure was announced in May. Trott, who previously served as iron ore chief executive, has been with Rio Tinto for over 25 years in various capacities.

Steve Vanry has joined GoldHaven Resources as chief financial officer (CFO), succeeding Sead Hamzagic, who resigned from the role in June. Vanry brings 25 years of experience in senior management to this new position, including his past role as CFO and director of Oroco Resource Corp.

estimate for Phase 2 in the second half of 2026.

In its latest operational review, the company reported producing more than two million tonnes of copper across its

Copper Road Resources has recruited Brian Howlett as its new president and CEO. Previous roles for Howlett have included president and CFO of Superior Copper Corp. from 2012 to 2014 and CFO of Dumont Nickel in 2007. Howlett succeeds Mark Goodman, who served as interim president and CEO after John Timmons’s departure from the company last year.

Philip Samar has retired from his role as vicepresident (VP) of government and community affairs at K92 Mining and will continue to contribute to the company in a consulting capacity as a senior advisor. Samar first joined the company in 2019 as VP of external and corporate affairs. Before K92, Samar served as managing director of the Mineral Resources Authority from 2012 to 2018.

Todd Stone has joined the Association for Mineral Exploration (AME) as its new president and CEO, succeeding Keerit Jutla, who stepped down in February. Prior to joining

operations in fiscal year 2025, a company record, along with 263 million tonnes of iron ore from its operations in Western Australia.

– Ashley Fish-Robertson

AME, Stone served as MLA for KamloopsSouth Thompson from 2013 to 2024, where he represented the B.C. Liberal Party, renamed BC United in 2023.

Darren Hall, Equinox Gold’s president and chief operating officer (COO), has been promoted to CEO and director of the company following the departure of Greg Smith, a founding executive and shareholder who led the company from its inception in 2017. Relatedly, David Schummer, previously executive VP of operations, has taken on the role of COO.

The Global Tailings Management Institute (GTMI), established in January to advance the safety of mine tailings facilities worldwide, has appointed Mark Cutifani, former CEO of Anglo American, as chair of its board of directors. Additionally, Vicente Mello, senior VP of global infrastructure, technical, environmental and social consultancy at AECOM, has joined the board as its deputy chair.

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The CIM Awards is a program owned and operated by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum.

OMake history history

By James Whyte and Craig Waldie

Part six of a series on NI 43-101 myths

ld mineral projects that didn’t make it before are often dusted off, given new wings and told to fly again. That’s not necessarily a bad thing—better technologies and changing economics can sometimes elevate a project awaiting its chance. And a project with a past could be seen to have a head start based on previous work.

When a company has a project with previous work or previous mineral inventories, that history will often be material information the company should include in its technical disclosure.

Accurate and complete disclosure of historical information gives investors a good idea of what kind of work a project may need; that five other juniors poked some holes in the property and cut a few interesting intersections could mean the property has potential or could just mean it’s been a five-time disappointment.

If there are historical estimates—and the estimates still have some relevance to the project today—then those numbers will help the public understand a project’s potential.

If you’ve been following this series of columns, you’ll know we always pull out the “damning but.” This time, it’s to say but historical information is not your work You did not control it, and you don’t know for sure how good it is. That is why National Instrument 43-101 provides a way to let the public see the information without forcing the company to file a technical report. But that also means the need for handling the information responsibly. Historical information requires a source and date, an opinion on its relevance and reliability, and context.

Historical estimates

Historical estimates can be anything from a detailed data set transferred to a new project operator to a simple record of an old tonnage and grade calculation in an assessment file. Solid information about that “relevance and reliability” that the Instrument requires you to comment on is easy to come by in the first case, and a closed book in the other. It is important to assess whether that closed-book estimate brings any value at all to an investment decision—and it certainly won’t if you can’t trace it to its origin.

The fact is that a long list of old estimates does little more than tell the public there’s some mineralization there—quantifying that may not help much.

It is worth noting that a historical estimate—whatever label a previous operator might have stuck on it—is no longer a mineral resource or mineral reserve, even though the mineralization might still be there. Loose talk about having “a mineral reserve from 1962” or “an NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource by a previous operator” is nonsense. Why?

Because it’s only a resource or reserve once it meets the CIM definitions, and it’s only a current mineral resource or reserve

once the company discloses its own estimate (and starts the clock on filing its own technical report).

A historical estimate is no longer a mineral resource or mineral reserve, even though the mineralization might still be there.

We should also draw a distinction between historical estimates and legacy data. Having legacy data can permit you to go back and verify it through resampling core, twinning holes or infill drilling. Having old estimates, but no access to core or data, means only that you can tell the public an old operator thought it had a mineral deposit, but the new operator has to verify this for itself.

History in technical reports

Once a company is ready to file its own technical report on the property, it becomes important to remember that Item 6 on Form 43-101F1, the “History” section, is intended only to be a summary and not an exhaustive documentation of everything that has been done since Georgius Agricola swung his pick. Chances are most of that history is not material.

The History section gets even worse when it is used to shoehorn an in-depth account of the previous operator’s resource estimates, which directly contradicts the cautionary language that is supposed to accompany it—especially the part that says you’re “not treating the historical estimate as current mineral resources or mineral reserves.” What you are actually saying is “Look at the exquisite work that last operator did. Look at its quality control, its semivariograms and its swath plots, aren’t they pretty? We’re immensely confident in their mineral resource estimate, as you should be too. We’re just not putting our names on the estimate ourselves.”

Old economic studies by others are not historical estimates so the allowance for disclosure with caution does not apply.

In the 2003 movie Big Fish, Albert Finney plays a character whose fondness for historical accounts of his fantastical past complicates his relationships with others who try to separate fact from fiction. You can avoid complications by always keeping project histories simple and limiting them to their genuinely important and relevant parts. While Albert Finney’s character continued on, your mineral project may not. CIM

James Whyte, P.Geo., retired in 2023 from his role as senior geologist at the Ontario Securities Commission. Craig Waldie is a senior geologist at the Ontario Securities Commission. Both authors are writing in their private capacity.

Send comments to editor@cim.org

Courtesy of James Whyte and Craig Waldie

EWhy we need disclosure

By Donna Beneteau and Bruce Downing

ach time we attend a mining conference, we leave more convinced of one thing: our industry is not doing enough to tell our story. There are so many incredible projects happening in the mining industry, and so many brilliant and engaged people. Yet we remain mediocre at communicating these stories, both within the sector and to the broader public. And it is costing us. University and college mining programs are closing. Projects are being delayed. We are struggling to attract the talent we need to drive the energy transition.

We all know the reasons, which include misinformation, mistrust and a societal disconnect from the materials that underpin modern life. Some information is available about mines and quarries on Canadian land. Canada has rigorous public reporting standards, most notably the NI 43-101 disclosure requirements that apply to companies listed on Canadian exchanges. For those companies’ mines, the NI 43-101 technical report contains the basic engineering details, such as mining methods, production quantities and infrastructure layouts.

However, in practice, many producing mines in Canada— particularly those run by private companies or those listed only on foreign stock exchanges—could be under no obligation to disclose detailed technical information to the public, as these operations fall outside the requirements of Canada’s NI 43-101 reporting system. While these sites may comply with environmental or permitting regulations, the broader technical context of how mining is done often remains behind closed doors. Occasionally, a technical report may be available through another global reporting framework, but this is not guaranteed.

As a result, when citizens, students or educators seek out information, they often hit a wall. There is no consistent, accessible way to trace the materials we rely on back to their source, making it more difficult to spark curiosity, build trust or foster informed public dialogue about the realities of modern mining. We can ask, “What have you done today that did not involve a mineral?”, but it will be difficult to find reliable information about where those minerals come from.

To prove how patchy the information is, we analyzed who owns the producing metal, non-metal, coal and oil sands mines listed in Canada’s Minerals and Mining Map, hosted online via Natural Resources Canada. In July 2025, only 35 per cent of those operating mines in Canada were listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), which requires NI 43-101 technical disclosures. The remainder are either privately owned or listed on other global exchanges. While 60 per cent of metal and 75 per cent of oil sands mines located in Canada are TSX-listed, only 14 per cent of nonmetal and zero per cent of coal mines are listed. So while NI 43101 is an effective tool within its scope, it doesn’t cover the full landscape of Canadian mining. And that matters because without a comprehensive disclosure mechanism, even those inside the industry struggle to access reliable technical information.

To help Canadians meaningfully, we need more publicly accessible information about the origins and processes behind the materials we use every day. This is about more than disclosure requirements. It is about trust, education and transparency. We must stop thinking of technical information as something for regulators and investors alone. It should also serve the public, especially if we want to maintain social licence and attract new generations to the field.

Canadians need more publicly accessible information about the origins and processes behind the materials we use every day.

And let’s not forget the bigger picture. The Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy document notes that “Canada already produces more than 60 minerals and metals.” However, while developing the Historical Canadian Mines Data Hub, we discovered that over 100 different minerals and rocks of economic value are tracked across the provinces and territories. Just for fun, we asked ChatGPT which minerals and rocks are essential to humans. It came back with a list of over 40, grouped into categories, such as those essential for human health, construction and infrastructure, energy and electronics, tools, jewellery and key industrial uses. Meanwhile, the International Mineralogical Association recognizes over 5,000 minerals on Earth. Somewhere between economic, decorative and essential lies the public’s need to understand why elements, rocks and minerals truly matter, and how they get from the Earth into our hands. Imagine if, just like food packaging lists ingredients, every product came with a label showing Earth’s contributions. Maybe then we could really, truly appreciate how the planet supports human life, and the incredible science and engineering that makes it all possible.

This is a call to action. What are you doing at your site, in your company, in the classroom or in the community to help make mining understandable? We cannot wait for public perception to shift on its own. We must take ownership of our story and share it clearly, honestly, and often. One way to contribute right now is by supporting a growing public resource: submit data to the Historical Canadian Mines Data Hub. The Hub database can be accessed via CIM.org/the-hub. If you have questions and/or would like information on this project, you can send them by email to: minesdatabase@cim.org CIM

Donna Beneteau is an associate professor of civil, geological and environmental engineering at the University of Saskatchewan and the driving force behind the Historical Canadian Mines Data Hub. Bruce Downing is a geoscientist based in Langley, B.C.

Courtesy of Donna Beneteau and Bruce Downing

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Indigenous participation in mining

A seat at the table

Taykwa Tagamou Nation’s $20 million investment into Canada Nickel is the largest of its kind in Canada

By Tijana Mitrovic

What can economic reconciliation and a shared prosperity model look like in mining? For Taykwa Tagamou Nation (TTN) and Canada Nickel, it means investing in nationbuilding and developing Canada’s domestic critical minerals supply chain.

In May, Toronto-based miner Canada Nickel announced the closing of the $20 million convertible note with TTN. It is the largest known direct investment by a First Nation into a critical minerals project or company in Canada. According to Canada Nickel, the note gives TTN the right to convert into 16.67 million common shares, for $1.20 per share, a 7.9 per cent equity interest in Canada Nickel, as well as a seat on the company’s board of directors.

“Reconciliation isn’t just about acknowledgements, it’s about action,” Chief Bruce Archibald of TTN told CIM Magazine in a written statement. “Economic reconciliation means First Nations are not just consulted, but [are] co-owners and decision makers. This partnership represents a real shift towards that model [and] shows what’s possible when First Nations have both a voice and a stake.”

According to Canada Nickel, the Crawford nickel sulfide project—located just 42 kilometres north of Timmins, Ontario,

and on the traditional territories of TTN—is the world’s second-largest nickel resource and reserve and is projected to be Canada’s largest nickel mine. The large-scale, open-pit mine and mill operation is expected to produce an average of 38,000 tonnes of nickel a year over the course of its 41-year mine life, according to a 2023 feasibility study

The Ontario government recently identified the $3.5 billion capex project as a priority critical minerals and nation-building project. In the fall, Canada Nickel received a letter of intent from Export Development Canada for up to $500 million in long-term debt financing. It has also recently received nearly $20 million in private placements, including funding from Agnico Eagle and a separate US$20 million bridge loan.

Canada Nickel is on track to receive federal permits for Crawford by the end of 2025 and is aiming to begin production in late 2027 or early 2028.

Collaboration and co-development

According to Canada Nickel CEO and director Mark Selby, when TTN first approached the company with its interest in investing, the company considered a number of different options

Taykwa Tagamou Nation and Canada Nickel sign the deal for TTN’s $20 million convertible note investment in the company. Left to right: TTN Deputy Chief Derek Archibald, Canada Nickel CEO Mark Selby, TTN Chief Bruce Archibald and TTN business development officer Candice Tourville, with Ontario Minister of Northern Economic Development and Growth George Pirie standing behind.

for TTN to invest its own capital. “We thought a convertible note was the best case,” he said. “It gives [TTN] equity exposure as if they owned equity, but it also provides them downside protection, as effectively it’s a debt instrument at the beginning, in that it gives them security over the land package. We thought this was a good risk-return trade-off.”

TTN has been involved with Canada Nickel since 2019 and has seen Crawford grow from an early-stage project to nearing mine construction. “From the outset, we saw a company that was willing to listen and collaborate, and not just check boxes,” Chief Archibald said. “We did not have conversations around typical ‘consultation’; we immediately were into deeper conversations about how we can collaborate through equity participation, infrastructure collaboration, shared governance and TTN’s visions for its nation.”

According to Sydney Oakes, director of Indigenous relations and public affairs at Canada Nickel, the connection between TTN and the company was mutual. “From the beginning, the relationship has been rooted in co-development, mutual respect and a shared vision for long-term, sustainable success—for both TTN’s generational wealth and our company’s operational growth,” Oakes told CIM Magazine . “[This] level of governance participation is a reflection of how far the relationship has come—from engagement to co-ownership and co-development.”

The relationship began with a transmission services agreement, where TTN committed to develop and operate a power line to supply electricity to the project, and later a haul fleet financing agreement, where TTN will finance all or a portion of the electric mining fleet for the project. Throughout these developments, TTN has also been working to move towards being self-sustaining through communityled development. The nation saw this investment as an opportunity to take a step closer to this vision with longterm and sustainable benefits.

“[The Crawford project] aligned with our values on clean energy, environmental responsibility and long-term economic growth,” Chief Archibald said. “This investment gives our nation a true seat at the table and a stake in shaping a 40-plus year project that will have lasting impact on our traditional territory.”

The investment also goes beyond the Crawford project to the company overall, meaning TTN will be able to partner with

Canada Nickel in its downstream processing facilities, other exploration properties and future opportunities or projects, which is why TTN considered the board seat an essential component of the agreement. “It’s not enough to be involved, we need to be part of the decision making,” Chief Archibald said. “Canada Nickel understood that early on, and it became a core part of our discussions. Our seat ensures our values—from environmental stewardship to community well-being—are represented at the highest level.”

Mutual benefits

For Canada Nickel, the investment partnership means TTN is an equal contributor. “I think [the partnership] is taking economic reconciliation to that real natural place where First Nations are having a say and having a seat at the table in terms of how economic development occurs on their territory,” Selby said.

An added benefit for the company is that the investment partnership strengthens its social licence to operate and adds operational strength and local support to the Crawford project, particularly as TTN already plays a key role in its infrastructure. And according to Oakes, the board representation means that TTN will be able to contribute its deep knowledge of the land, a long-term perspective on sustainable development and a credible voice when engaging with governments and regulators.

“If we’re serious about shared ownership, we have to be serious about shared governance,” Oakes said. “It makes our projects stronger [and] more grounded, more collaborative and more aligned with the community’s needs and expectations.”

What makes the investment partnership unique for the mining industry is both the quantity and the scale of the investment, as well as TTN coming in at an earlier point in the project. “There have been other transactions where communities bought X per cent of assets that have been operating for 30 years,” Selby said. “This is coming at a different risk-reward point, where it does give a lot more upside potential to the First Nations community. And it’s also at a point in time where it’s very helpful for us in terms of being able to get through the final stages of permitting and get big investors to the table in terms of project partnerships.”

Both the leadership of TTN and Canada Nickel believe this partnership can serve as a model for other mining companies to go beyond consultation to economic reconciliation. Chief Archibald said companies should do more than just consultation and explore what equity, governance and shared planning can look like. “Economic reconciliation requires companies to be willing to give up some control and truly partner with First Nations,” he said. “It’s about long-term relationships, not shortterm approvals.”

According to Selby, mining companies cannot develop this type of relationship and reach economic reconciliation overnight. It takes time to set the foundation of how companies approach their work on First Nations’ territories. “[If you] do it with a real spirit of partnership and openness to sharing the benefits, and if you start that as early as possible, then that gives you the time to build the relationship,” he said. CIM

Indigenous Participation in Mining will run throughout 2025 and explore the people, the ideas and the models that are moving mining projects and economic reconciliation forward.

Sydney Oakes, Canada Nickel’s director of Indigenous relations (top left), and Chief Archibald (right) in a meeting with Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Greg Rickford, the province’s minister of Indigenous affairs and First Nations economic reconciliation.

Courtesy of Canada Nickel

The balance of security and innovation

The mining industry is undergoing significant digital transformation, but new technologies can also increase vulnerability to cybersecurity threats

By Lynn Greiner

Digital transformation can be a double-edged sword for mining companies. On one hand, it can improve operations, cut costs and reduce danger to miners. On the other hand, it can introduce risks that turn those improvements on their ears.

This often causes cybersecurity managers to object to digital innovation, warning companies that they are opening themselves up to unacceptable cybersecurity risks by introducing new technology. But it does not have to be that way; when properly managed, cybersecurity can be a business enabler.

“Digital transformation is supercharging efficiency in the mining sector, but it’s also widening the attack surface—the number of opportunities for cybercriminals to access a company’s internal systems—in the process,” noted Matt Breuillac, managing director at Perth, Australia-based Cyber Node. “As mining companies embrace cloud-based analytics, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and remote operations, they’re also connecting OT [operational technology] and IT [information technology] environments more tightly than ever. In doing so, they’re exposing themselves to new classes of threats, many of which they’re not fully equipped to handle.”

Those threats, he explained, are some that the average enterprise does not face.

“While traditional businesses prioritize IT security, mining companies often prioritize OT security first due to its direct link to uptime, safety and environmental impact,” he said. “That’s because mining operations are built on a foundation of industrial IoT and legacy OT systems—technologies that weren’t designed with cybersecurity in mind, but now sit at the heart of critical processes. These environments are packed with sensors, SCADA [supervisory control and data acquisition] systems and remote monitoring set-ups that aren’t easily patched or rebooted like typical IT infrastructure.”

Add to that the connectivity challenges often faced at remote locations, which make secure remote access—an essential requirement for many technologies—difficult to maintain.

“All these technologies, while essential as the mining companies innovate, bring an increased set of cyber risks if not designed and deployed in a secure manner,” said Lester Chng, senior cybersecurity advisor at Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst, Toronto Metropolitan University’s national centre for cyber training, acceleration, applied research and development and

public education. “Of most concern is the push for optimization of mining operations via the increased connectivity of IT networks and equipment with that of OT.”

Carlos Chalico, EY Americas metals and mining cybersecurity leader, pointed out that from a cybersecurity perspective, mining companies not only need to pay attention to IT challenges, but also to those on the OT side. “This challenge is specifically related to the fact that, in the past, OT devices and networks had their own communications protocol and they were not connected to traditional office IT networks,” he said. “But now that has changed and the two of these networks can be connected to each other—so if one is compromised, the other one can be impacted.”

Those OT networks may include anything from sensors and devices in the mine itself to automation in processing plants and autonomous vehicles hauling ore.

If an intruder manages to compromise either the IT or OT network, they could extend their attack into the other, hitting both the business side and the operations side of the company.

“In the end, what we need is a way to properly segment the network, to properly manage these devices in a way that is not only responding to the operation, but is also helping reduce the risk of exposure to all these elements,” Chalico said.

Security professionals also have to protect multiple connected locations, making their jobs even more complicated. And, noted Chng, one key difference between mining companies and other businesses is the scale of the disruption caused by a cyberattack. “This disruption can cause significant revenue loss due to inability to monitor and manage incidents that impact OT equipment,” he said. “An incident impacting OT can range from catastrophic production downtime to loss of life and limb.”

The potential safety impacts on mining operations from OT cyberattacks could be severe, according to Chng. For example, a cyberattack on haul trucks or excavator control systems could cause sudden acceleration, braking or steering changes, putting operators and nearby workers at risk; attacks on ventilation controls could stop airflow or reverse fans, leading to a dangerous buildup of toxic gases or depletion of oxygen; and a sudden conveyor belt stoppage or restart could cause material spills, crushing hazards or entrapment for maintenance crews.

Increased resilience

However, those risks should not be the reason that companies step back from digital innovation, said Rob Labbé, CEO and chief information security officer (CISO)-in-residence at the Mining and Metals Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (MMISAC), a not-for-profit organization committed to improving the cyber resilience of mining and metals companies. Instead, they should look at ways to increase their operation’s resilience.

The solution: having a good mitigation plan. But, Labbé noted, when companies introduce technology, they may neglect to re-evaluate their business continuity, resilience and disaster recovery plans. “There are ‘now’ problems and there are ‘not now’ problems, and it’s very easy to push this into a ‘not now’ problem,” he said.

The cyber elephant in the room, of course, is artificial intelligence (AI). Although it can be a boon to miners—for example, by monitoring and optimizing the variables involved in ore extraction in real time to achieve the best yield—it is increasingly also being used by criminals for nefarious purposes.

Mitigating AI threats is a mix of training—for example, recognizing AI-generated phishing messages can sometimes be difficult—and proper management and governance of data in all areas of the organization, from head office to the sites. It can be just as expensive if an AI tool goes awry and messes up a process due to poor or corrupted training data as it can be if an AIgenerated phish resulted in a data breach.

“Mitigating cyber risks in industrial environments starts with a layered approach, treating IT and OT as distinct but interconnected domains,” Breuillac said. “Segmentation between the two is critical to prevent lateral movement if one side gets breached. Visibility is another major hurdle; many mining companies still don’t have a full inventory of connected assets, particularly IIoT devices and shadow IT [unapproved or unmanaged technology, such as devices, software or cloud services, that are used within the organization without the knowledge or oversight of the IT or security team] lurking on the edges of the network.”

Chng noted that the “foundational step” is creating and maintaining a complete inventory of IT and OT assets, so companies know what they have to protect.

Baseline controls such as strong user authentication, a solid data backup strategy and an incident response plan are key in protecting the operations, Chng said, as well as implementing best practices in network segregation, access control, thirdparty risk management and, critically, cybersecurity awareness training.

According to Breuillac, technology alone is not enough. “Training is still one of the most effective lines of defence,” he said. “It needs to go beyond office-based staff, and reach engineers, contractors and anyone with access to critical systems, especially those in remote or rugged locations.”

Additionally, real-world testing such as penetration testing and red teaming to simulate attacks and uncover blind spots in defences are important. “[However], even with strong detection, [incident] response remains a weak point,” he cautioned. “Too many companies lack tested incident-response playbooks for cyberattacks that disrupt real-world systems and equipment.”

In addition, Breuillac pointed out, physical security is as important as cybersecurity.

Companies can ease their fears and try out new technology securely through small-scale pilots that include the necessary cybersecurity controls, Chng added, noting that the sector is

comfortable with this mechanism. This, he said, will increase their confidence and make adoption more likely.

Enablers not deniers

Breuillac observed that some mining companies are hitting pause on digital innovation, not because they do not see its value, but because the risks often feel overwhelming. “There’s lingering discomfort around losing control, especially with cloud platforms and third-party remote systems,” he said. “The idea of a cyberattack disrupting physical operations is no longer hypothetical. Add regulatory fallout and reputational damage, and it’s easy to see why some firms are wary of moving too fast.”

Those fears, combined with negativity from the security team, can make management put digital innovation on hold. However, Chalico pointed out, organizations need to change the chief security officer and C-suite’s point of view about security to shut down the “Department of No”.

“We need to find a way to balance risk mitigation with operational effectiveness,” he said. “Of course we need to verify that risks are properly controlled, the risk appetite is properly defined, so that we do things that will be in alignment with the risk appetite the organization has.”

To do that, he said, cybersecurity professionals need to speak the language of business.

“There is an interesting dichotomy [between] the way cybersecurity is done at most mining companies and how that team is measured and goaled and rewarded, [which] disincentivizes and obstructs innovation by design, and that’s a problem,” added Labbé. “Some of the research I’m looking at shows that 40 per cent of innovation projects at mining and similar industrial companies get killed by cybersecurity teams. That’s not a win.”

The success of a security team is often measured on things like a high maturity score, or the control framework in use, not on how they enable the business, he said. “What are the odds that the new innovation you’re coming up with now is going to fit in a box somebody built five years ago?” he asked.

Labbé cited a mining company he spoke with last year that had an innovation team of 10 data scientists who proposed a number of initiatives, all of which were squashed by the security team.

“What’s the cost of 10 data scientists for a year that you got no value from? You paid them, you got nothing from it? That’s probably a big number,” he pointed out. “Then what’s the opportunity cost of what they would have delivered—what value did the business lose? They didn’t deliver any of their projects. It’s probably even a bigger number.”

Cultural change

Security is as much a mindset as a technology.

“One overarching factor that is often overlooked is the cultural change required when it comes to cybersecurity,” Chng said. “For cybersecurity to be adopted and be an integral part of an organization’s digital transformation, emphasis must be placed on changing the culture.”

Mining itself, he said, is a great example. “The safety culture in mining is a perfect example that leadership should look to model after as they evangelize cybersecurity within their organizations,” he said. “The parallels are uncanny, and leaders should model the training programs, governance structure, cultural norms and behaviours and leadership emphasis in order to bring about this cultural change.” CIM

From hard rock to safer ground

The mining industry’s response to the enduring challenge of driving down the rate of fatalities and serious injuries

By Rosalind Stefanac

The good news is that the mining industry has been steadily reducing its number of recorded injuries over the past decade. The bad? For a second consecutive year, fatalities have risen among member companies of global industry body ICMM; the organization reported that 42 miners lost their lives at work in 2024, compared to 36 fatalities recorded in 2023 and 33 in 2022. Just this past July, six miners died at Codelco’s El Teniente underground copper mine in Chile due to a tunnel collapse following a magnitude 4.2 seismic event that may have been induced by mining activities.

Gordon Winkel, chair and industrial professor at the University of Alberta’s faculty of engineering, said the safeguards, controls and barriers meant to protect workers are of little use if they are not effectively applied. “It’s sad to say that many of the fatalities we saw in 2024 were very much due to controls not working or not being executed as intended,” he said.

He pointed to four key areas that continue to contribute to mining fatalities: human interaction with mobile equipment, fall of ground, working at height and falling objects. “Imagine if we could increase our focus in those four areas, half of tragedies we saw could have been avoided,” he said.

Winkel noted that while advances in technology, combined with technical controls and procedures, will continue to make mining environments safer, experts agree that these are only part of the solution. The other key factor is honing a strong safety culture in the workplace. In fact, many believe it is the strength of an organization’s safety culture—the shared values, behaviours and attitudes that shape how people approach safety, risk and compliance within the workplace—that will ultimately enable a zero-fatality future in mining.

Dana Cartwright, senior manager of innovation at ICMM, pointed out that more than a quarter of fatal mining incidents among its members in 2024 were linked to not following established rules or procedures. Yet only one fatality was officially recorded as involving “safety culture” as a contributing factor. “This suggests that the deeper cultural issues driving risky behaviour, rule-breaking or lapses in discipline are unrecognized in incident investigations,” she said.

Further long-term analysis by ICMM also showed that contractors are more likely than employees to be involved in a fatal incident, suggesting that they may not receive the same level of

site induction or safety training as permanent employees. Cartwright noted that critical controls can be less frequently verified in contractor-led work, especially when oversight is fragmented or accountability for controls is unclear between site owners and third-party supervisors.

Culture drives safety

The potential of new technologies to substantially improve safety in mining environments is already showing great promise, from real-time fatigue monitoring and collision avoidance systems to autonomous equipment that removes workers from high-risk environments. ICMM’s Innovation for Cleaner, Safer Vehicles initiative is bringing its members together with some of the world’s largest manufacturers to accelerate a new generation of mining vehicles and improve existing ones.

Still, Cartwright said the challenge will be in integrating safety into the very design of these technology solutions and then pairing it with a culture of leadership, learning and care.

“It’s as much about mindset and behaviour as it is about systems and metrics,” she said. “While new technologies offer huge benefits, they also bring new risks that we need to understand before using them.”

When people start to rely on technology to do the safeguarding, there is a risk of complacency, said Mike Parent, president and CEO of Workplace Safety North (WSN). “What we found is that operators started to move faster on the ramps because they thought the technology would advise them if there was another vehicle or person in proximity,” he said.

He cited one incident at a mine where, by the time the technology alerted the operator, there was no time to decelerate and a collision ensued. “There were no injuries, but it was a lesson on what can happen if a person starts to rely too much on technology,” he said.

Parent, who has experience working in underground mines, said engaging employees at all levels of an organization in the process of implementing new safety-driven technologies is essential to increasing overall “buy-in” and ensuring that controls are effective. He said the Climate Audit and Assessment Tool, available through WSN, is a good way for organizations to see where there are gaps in the implementation of safety policies and procedures based on workplace culture.

Workplace Safety North offers the Climate Audit and Assessment Tool, which examines how health and safety culture and management systems interact with one another.

“We’ve done a number of these now in and outside of Ontario and found a correlation between the best health and safety performance and a strong climate audit,” he said. “You could see a tight line between what was expected and understood between senior management, middle management, front-line supervisors and workers.”

Along with a commitment to safety among a company’s leadership, Parent said audit data shows that engaging employees and working collectively to identify and mitigate risks proves most effective. “If, as an employee, I’m involved in the decisions as to why certain controls are in place, I think the likelihood of conformance is much higher,” he said. It is ultimately about creating an environment where every worker—from the haul truck operator to the mine manager—feels empowered to speak up, stop unsafe work and take responsibility for their own safety and that of their colleagues.

In working to further reduce fatalities in the mining sector, Jon Treen, president of consulting company Automate Mining, stressed the importance of striking the right balance in how resources are allocated to preventing serious injury and fatality (SIF) events. While investigating injuries and near misses is always valuable and the overall goal is zero harm in the workplace, Treen said ensuring there is sufficient focus on SIF events is critical.

“It’s like the triage in a hospital setting where the most effort goes towards the most serious cases,” he explained. “There also has to be that level of compassion and caring from leadership for all injuries, even if they’re not giving two incidents the same amount of importance.”

Treen sees technology playing a key role in strengthening safety culture by giving employees instant access to safety policies and procedures. “Organizations are getting to the point where every individual in the workplace who carries a tablet or phone can have every procedure at their fingertips,” he said, noting that the next step would be ensuring these same employees have access to videos that demonstrate how to work safely in any scenario.

By engaging seasoned operators to determine the best way to complete procedures and then sharing these practices across the organization through technology, he said employers can ensure “everyone is on the same page” when it comes to safe work practices. “Even if people read and retain a procedure, they’re not going to have the same picture in their mind about what they read, and this is where technology can help.”

A team effort

Beyond improving safety-related communication and SIF reporting within organizations is the importance of collaboration and transparency on safety issues across the industry. To that end, the Health & Safety Society of CIM, in conjunction with CIM Magazine, has produced several webinars focused on SIF prevention. The society has also appointed a SIF prevention working group to work with industry to develop a national Canadian SIF database over the next two years that companies can access and contribute to.

John Doyle, managing partner at SolutionStream Performance Improvement Group, has been consulting on strategy, leadership and organization culture for the last 25 years and is on the working group alongside Treen and Winkel. He said the database will be a place for all mining companies in Canada to cite SIF incidents, collaborate and share learnings on a timely basis to get better at preventing fatalities and serious injuries in mining.

“Right now, each province has its own standards, statistics and reporting structure and there is nowhere where we tie it all together,” he said. “When a fatality happens, we often know about it, but we don’t know exactly what happened. The sooner we can learn about it, the sooner we can look in our own backyards to see if we have a similar situation going on.”

While there has been tremendous progress in mining over the last 25 years to broadly reduce injuries, Doyle said the industry has “flatlined” on the serious injury and fatality side; the challenge still lies in fully understanding how to change that. “It’s about how to create a zero-fatality mindset and a belief across all levels of the operation that we’re not going to lose people or send them home debilitated from serious injuries,” he said.

Even with the best safety plans in place, Doyle said organizations need to recognize that a safety culture will not happen overnight; it takes consistency, visible leaders at all levels willing to listen and workers who feel empowered to speak up and act. “There are some mining operations that are already well on their way because they had inspired leaders who understood the important role of leadership, and then there are others that still have a lot of work to get there,” he said.

As ICMM’s Cartwright noted, leadership is still central in turning safety culture from aspiration into reality. “When leaders consistently model safe behaviours, empower people to speak up about hazards and tie decision making to risk awareness, safety becomes embedded in daily operations and resilient— even as technology, processes and risks evolve,” she said. CIM

A power change that changes everything.

Boost productivity, enhance safety and cut emissions – all while lowering your total cost of operation.

Facing the fire

Forsite Fire’s Andy Low explains how wildfires can impact mine sites and why comprehensive mitigation planning is key to long-term resilience

By Mehanaz Yakub

Andy Low is a senior wildland fire specialist and registered professional forester at Forsite Fire, a division of Forsite Consultants. With over 25 years of experience in wildfire management, Low began his career as a wildland firefighter, working across some of Canada’s most fire-prone regions. His experience includes rappel firefighting (rappelling from a helicopter into otherwise inaccessible remote areas to fight wildfires) with Parks Canada and the BC Wildfire Service Rapattack program, followed by several years in the active Penticton Fire Zone in the Okanagan region.

Low went on to hold a position as provincial wildfire preparedness officer in the Provincial Wildfire Coordination Centre in Kamloops, before joining wildland fire management specialist John Davies at Davies Wildfire Inc. in 2017. Davies and Low went on to launch a new wildfire consulting firm, Frontline Operations Group, in 2019. In 2023, they sold the company to Forsite Consultants, and they now lead the Forsite Fire team, focusing on wildfire risks, impacts and mitigation strategies tailored to communities, governments and industry clients, including mining operators.

In a conversation with CIM Magazine, Low shared insights on how wildfire risk is evolving, what mining operations need to understand about mitigation and resiliency, and the role emerging technologies play in improving emergency planning and preparedness.

CIM: What key risks and impacts can wildfires have on a mining operation?

Low: When it comes to wildfire risk, we have to distinguish what stage a mine is at and what its footprint looks like. For example, an established, operating mine is generally resilient to direct wildfire impacts because there are usually large, cleared areas around the site, and the material around is typically nonflammable, such as rock, gravel and defensible space. Defensible

space is the area between a structure and adjacent wildland fuels [combustible materials that can sustain a fire, such as vegetation or other organic matter]; adequate defensible space can slow or halt the progression of a wildfire, [and] it can also provide wildland firefighters room to operate around structures during firefighting and structure protection operations. The buildings themselves are also usually built with noncombustible materials like metal or concrete.

The concern is all the other things that might be on that mine footprint: vehicles, materials [or] debris that may be accumulated or not yet disposed of. During a high-intensity wildfire, you are going to see not just radiant heat, but embers being cast far ahead of an active crown fire. With adequate defensible space, it is often not the big flames that burn down buildings, but the embers that are igniting parts of a building, materials or nearby combustibles, which can then spread to the entire structure and potentially from building to building.

The other, bigger concern we have is the impact the fire might have on the different critical infrastructure of the mine, whether that be roads for transportation or electrical transmission and distribution lines that traverse long distances through forested areas. It is not just the fire threat to the mine site itself, but also to all those different connections that the mine operation relies on.

No matter the size or scale of an operation—whether at the mineral exploration stage or full production—we need to remember that we are operating in, and are subject to, the wildfire environment. Operators need to be able to understand and plan for wildfire risks to their people and assets.

CIM: What does an effective wildfire risk mitigation strategy look like for mining operations?

Low: We like to frame this as a journey towards wildfire resiliency and that starts with quantifying or characterizing the risk. When we conduct a risk assessment, we are looking at the

different factors of the wildfire environment within which the mine and its connections are situated, including fuel, vegetation and forest types.

We also look at topography: is the mine on flat ground? Is it at the top of a hill? Is it at the bottom? What about the power lines or roads—are they on high ground, or are they in the valley bottom?

Then we examine prevailing and historic weather conditions and analyze them using the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System. We track fuel moisture codes [numeric ratings of the moisture content of the forest floor and other dead organic matter] and fire behaviour indices over time and look for increasing trends, as these are good indicators of rising risk.

Having boots on the ground is a key part of a complete wildfire risk assessment and mitigation plan. A desktop review only goes so far; there is huge value in having us or a wildfire professional consultant visit the mine site to gain a deeper understanding of the key assets and processes. When someone can walk the site and assess the fuel structure and how the built environment relates to the forested environment, they can begin to put together what the risks could look like if the mine were threatened by wildfire.

So, we combine desktop analysis with on-site assessment. Integrating those factors with the site’s activity gives us a strong sense of the overall risk to the site and the operation.

From there, it is about finding out the ways these risks can be mitigated. In some cases, those mitigations might be very simple. They may include just tidying up a site, removing dilapidated wooden buildings that are highly susceptible to ember ignition. It may involve moving flammable materials away from permanent structures. Or it could be reviewing the entire road network that connects everything to the mine, or the power that is delivered to the mine. We also consider strategies such as establishing or increasing defensible space through vegetation clearing as well as opportunities to incorporate protective solutions such as pole wraps on wooden power poles. These are all examples of potential physical mitigations.

To tie it all together, we help our clients figure out how best to incorporate wildfire risks into their emergency response plans. Do they track fire danger? Do they have an awareness of what potential fire behaviour they could face that day, tomorrow or in a week? That way, the operation has the best information to support daily planning and, if needed, begin executing an emergency response and make informed decisions about the safety of personnel and the protection of assets on site.

CIM: Could you share a real-world example of Forsite Fire putting a mitigation strategy into action, and what value it brought to the client overall?

Low: A good example of the value of having that on-site look with our own eyes and speaking directly with the people responsible for key operations is a project we did in Yukon in 2024. This was for a mine under care and maintenance, transitioning into remediation. The site had water quality issues and a network of end-of-line systems, which caps, diverts and captures contaminated water and then pumps it into a water treatment facility or back into a holding pond.

The site itself is massive, with most buildings located in a vast landscape of broken rock and roads. However, the critical end-of-line capture and pumping systems were situated right at the edge of the mine and adjacent to the forest. Through the

assessment process, we were able to focus on the most important function of the care and maintenance program: preventing contaminated water from entering the environment.

If fire were to impact those really important sites, that could result in contaminated water entering the environment and causing all sorts of problems. I do not know if that kind of insight and the level of importance those sites represented would have been adequately conveyed solely through a desktop analysis. It really came about through physically going to the site, meeting with the engineers and touring the site with them.

CIM: Are there any emerging technologies that are making a significant impact on the future of wildfire risk mitigation?

Low: We make use of fire behaviour and fire growth modelling at a high level, so we are able to model thousands of iterations of fire growth scenarios.

We had another example in B.C., where a mine was connected to a highway by a 60-kilometre road through mountainous terrain. The mine site itself was well protected from wildfire threats due to its location among glaciers, rock peaks and avalanche chutes, but the biggest wildfire risk factor was the road that people, supplies and the full supply chain would [use to] travel in and out of [the site].

Our focus narrowed in on that road, and we conducted fire behaviour modelling informed by our on-site fuel type assessments, which can be especially important in areas where there is no great fuel type match [where the local vegetation is not well represented by the fuel type categories in Canada’s Fire Behaviour Prediction System]. Then we ran some modelling to determine what the potential wildfire impacts on the road could be.

From there, we worked backwards to help the client understand: if a fire starts under certain conditions and within a specific proximity to the road, how much time would they have before they could no longer access the road, or when the fire would impact it.

Being able to give the client a timeframe is important because with a deeper understanding, they can adjust or inform their emergency response planning.

We also have technology able to incorporate light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data into a program that we call Fuel ID. Fuel, weather and topography are the three main inputs into fire behaviour analysis; there is a fuel type [map] for the entire country, and each province has done its own fuel type mapping.

Forsite developed Fuel ID as a process that takes LiDAR data and pulls out tree and vegetation characteristics, and allows us to classify fuels and develop fuel mapping layers at a much higher resolution than the publicly available government maps of fuel types in Canada. This is significant because if you have a better fuel map layer that is more reflective of what is actually there on the ground, you are going to get better model outputs. Fuel ID is available for areas in Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan, and we are currently working on expanding its coverage across Canada.

The other technological solutions that we offer are custom modelling solutions that we have developed for utility clients to help in their day-to-day grid operations. In some cases, those can be easily adapted to a mining context. At the root of it are points, polygons and lines out on the landscape, which can provide clients with an understanding of what the fire impacts could be to them. CIM

Flexibility for the future

Discovery to production timelines are stubbornly long. The demand for critical minerals is only growing.

Should the industry re-imagine mine planning and design?

By Tijana Mitrovic

Today’s mines are deeper, wider and bigger than ever before as miners look for big mineral deposits and big projects to build around them. However, the ground the mining industry works on is never stable. Whether it is geological uncertainty, volatile commodity prices or geopolitical shifts, uncertainty plays a central role in the industry.

“The biggest challenge is something called radical uncertainty,” said Scott Dunbar, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering. “You have no idea in some cases what’s there or what’s coming. These are the unknown unknowns. There are also known unknowns [that] you have no way of characterizing. There are going to be problems, but you don’t know when they will happen.”

While mining companies currently try to be as efficient as possible, flexibility offers another path forward that could help miners better adapt in the face of uncertainty and unlock new potential for the industry.

Little room for flexible planning

For Andy Reynolds, president of Inspire Resources, an Alberta-based management consulting company, the major challenge is that the mining industry currently does not evaluate uncertainty in a way that would allow for more flexibility in mine planning. “There are essentially two ways of dealing with uncertainty,” he said. “One is to try and make yourself as efficient as possible so that if times get hard, everybody else fails first. That’s the way the industry works.”

The second way is to try to make yourself as adaptable as possible so that you can change as things change externally. “This alternative way is usually more expensive and looks less efficient in a steady state scenario—in other words, if you have a flexible system and things don’t change, [then] you have overinvested and it’s more expensive than it needed to be,” he said.

When mining companies assume that all variables will remain the same, they tend to choose efficiency over flexibility because it comes with a lower cost. “The major shortcoming is that we’re in denial about change and uncertainty, or we abstract it away,” Reynolds said. “But the world is changing, and that is getting a bit difficult [to do].”

According to Reynolds, flexibility and adaptability in mine planning boil down to an understanding of how to do things differently in the face of changing circumstances. Yet often, the current system of mining prevents this understanding and flexibility from becoming common practice. The regimented process that takes a project from feasibility to detailed engineering, construction and years of planned operations is at odds with the countless variables that change over the course of those many years.

“We tend to favour economies of scale, which means building things really big and making big upfront investments, and that tends to lock us in,” he explained. “When we build a mineral processing plant with a gigantic semi-autogenous grinding mill in the middle of it, everybody becomes a slave to the mill because if you don’t keep that mill fed, then you’re losing money hand over fist. But if you had 10 smaller mills, you would have a lot more flexibility to do different things.”

The mine design process is often very set, with little to no room for deviations. For Dunbar, who researches how technical and business paradigm changes can be combined to mitigate the challenges the industry currently faces, the overall system is constrained by commitments of time and money, which prevents flexibility from being part of the mine design process.

According to Dunbar, retrieving and extracting metals or materials through alternatives to the “drill, blast, load, haul, dump” process could offer another approach to mine planning. One example is in-situ recovery, where the metal or material is extracted without moving ore.

Another is near-situ recovery, where the ore is processed in small, mobile and modular plants located near the points of ore extraction. “The technology is available to design equipment to do this,” he said. “Such a system would have the flexibility to adapt.”

“Every time we try to build something big and expensive with very detailed plans a long way into the future, we just make ourselves a hostage to fortune.”

– Andy Reynolds, Inspire Resources

Economies of scale, or the cost advantages from larger production volumes, add to the current inflexibility. “It’s ‘go big or go home,’” Dunbar said of the current mine planning system. “[If] the deposit and the equipment you are using do not fit that model, it is just too expensive. That’s a major constraint, and we have to learn to think of ways of making things smaller or doing things in smaller chunks, because the smaller things are, the more adaptable they are.”

Of course, when the mine becomes operational, the process of extraction is another opportunity to adopt a more flexible, iterative approach to planning. However, inflexibility in the face of economies of scale can also trickle down to mining technology, as often contemporary mining equipment is not set up either for smaller operations or for flexible and novel ways of tackling potential issues. There is also a disconnect between long-term mine plans and short-term, or operational, plans.

According to Roussos Dimitrakopoulos, a professor at McGill University’s mining engineering program and director of the COSMO Stochastic Mine Planning Laboratory, “state-of-the-art methods in dealing with supply (geological) and demand (market) uncertainty make a substantial contribution in managing uncertainty and quantifying risk and they are available to the mining industry.”

He highlighted the KPI-COSMO Stochastic Mining Optimizer as an advance planning tool to improve both ore production and net present value (NPV). Going forward, he said he sees research advancing on the interaction between short-term and long-term mine complex production planning. How operations integrate the two can affect how long-term production plans can be adapted based on new learnings and updates.

“If I don’t connect the two parts, it makes it very difficult to know where I stand a year later,” he said. “How close am I to what was going on and why should I believe that next year’s forecast will be as good as I expect? The flexibility in this context becomes, ‘how do I link operational aspects with long-term planning?’ That is typically not done particularly well, thus new technologies are needed to address this issue, which led to our research into the self-learning mining complex.”

Exploring models for more flexible approaches

Through Inspire Resources, Reynolds has been exploring what flexibility and adaptability in mining could look like. Describing itself as a “technology-enabled adaptation company,” Inspire Resources leverages modelling, simulation and

participative social processes to help companies improve adaptability. It has worked with OZ Minerals, an Australian mining company that was acquired by BHP in 2023, and Novamera, a mining technology company that specializes in surgical mining technologies and “small-footprint, turnkey” mining solutions.

When it comes to facing uncertainty, Reynolds said that simulation is key, either through off-the-shelf simulation tools or writing and developing one’s own code, which Inspire Resources does.

“It’s the upgrade in the skills that are needed to give flexibility a fair shot,” Reynolds explained. “The key point is that flexibility is usually a trade-off against efficiency in the steady state. It has an economic value that can be calculated, but only if you have the methods to calculate it.”

The company began working with OZ in 2020, which that same year had created its Think & Act Differently (TAD) incubator to facilitate innovation in the mining industry; one objective was to investigate scalable, adaptable and modular opportunities for mining. Over several years, Inspire Resources worked with OZ, doing modelling and simulation to help the company understand what flexibility means, as well as how to quantify and take advantage of it.

A key component of the partnership was developing a structure for OZ’s scalable and adaptable strategy, according to Reynolds. Inspire Resources conducted a study that investigated what modularity could look like at a mining operation.

“We concluded that flexibility is a whole-system question,” Reynolds said. “There is no one piece of equipment that will make an inflexible system flexible. You have to architect it from the beginning. The obvious question was, what does that look like?”

OZ turned this question into an innovation challenge through its TAD incubator, called the Scalable & Adaptable Challenge. Seven companies were invited to take part, and over the course of nine to 12 months, the challenge participants developed a simulated system of mineral extraction and processing based on a satellite deposit at OZ Minerals’ Prominent Hill copper-gold mine in South Australia, which had already been mined. The results were published in a July 2022 white paper.

“We subjected that simulation to disruption and change and [asked] what the flexibilities that were designed into this were, and how much they were worth,” Reynolds said. “We demonstrated two important things. One was that you could calculate and put an economic value on flexibility. The other is that you can build an alliance of collaboration partners to co-design a whole system together.”

Inspire Resources is currently working with Novamera, having created and sold software to the mining technology company that helps it evaluate its projects and optimize extraction plans.

“Essentially, it’s taking a different approach,” Reynolds explained. “Conventionally, you would look at the ore in the ground, optimize the stopes and then design the access to get to them. What we did was to take the ore in the ground and then look at all of the possible extraction paths and evaluate them all, and just punch holes through that block model and just run a lot of computationally intensive calculations. As a result, we can take several weeks of work and collapse it down to hours and sometimes minutes.”

Since Novamera specializes in helping mining companies turn projects that are deemed uneconomical to mine—such as narrow-vein mineral resources—into ones that generate a return on investment, this is key. Inspire Resources and

Novamera are currently working on developing the software further to test how to respond to uncertainty and change.

However, having a more flexible mine plan goes beyond the current technologies and mine planning systems miners use.

According to Reynolds, managing that flexibility and knowing how to respond to change is key.

“You can’t really calculate the value of flexibility without knowing how you’re going to use it,” he said. “It really comes down to management decision logic; ‘if this happens, I will change the plan to this, or if this happens, I’ll change the plan to that.’ You need to know what your alternative plans could be.”

For Dimitrakopoulos, as miners operate and gather additional information, including from sensors that monitor several aspects of mining operations, two issues need to be addressed. “First, the updating of all models and performance indicators, including uncertainty quantification from grade simulations to equipment performance, is required,” he said. The technology to do this exists, he noted.

“Then, the uncertainty-based adaptations of the existing short-term plans need to be updated. This is seen as the selflearning mining complex, based on established methods such as stochastic mine planning as well as integrated techniques from machine learning.”

Dimitrakopoulos added that an algorithm can be developed to allow a mine planning system to obtain information from equipment and production sampling sensors to see how things have been performing. “That then becomes, in a sense, a self-learning mining complex,” he said. “Then you can find a way to take this learning and see how you [can] adapt the short-term plans that you made before you developed this information and before the learning. That provides extremely interesting results because suddenly you see that the sequence of what [will be] mined next week and the [week after] becomes different than before.”

Of course, the initial mine plan determines which operational decisions miners can take, and inevitably creates constraints. Yet, according to Reynolds, miners do already show some intuition for flexibility and how it can benefit the mining process.

“I believe one of the reasons why miners prefer wheeled vehicles over conveyors underground, even though they’re less efficient, is that wheeled vehicles are more flexible,” Reynolds said, as an example. “That’s kind of an intuitive decision that they’re willing to pay the extra cost [for] because when the mine plan changes, they don’t have to buy new conveyors; they can just send [the vehicles] on a different path.”

What flexibility can unlock for mining

A more flexible approach to mine design and planning could have more benefits than just allowing miners to better adapt to potential changes throughout the life of mine. Dunbar also believes that it could lead to decreased waste production, more efficiency in the operation over time and potentially a smaller environmental footprint.

Beyond the economic and environmental benefits, Reynolds said that the “most attractive” part of flexibility in mining is the social and community benefits. “When we’re flexible, we create mutual social obligations and strong bonds of trust and partnership, which is exactly what we need around mining,” he said.

Demonstrating that flexibility can help mitigate some of the social licence uncertainty at the beginning of a project, especially around local knowledge. “You just cannot expect to know everything at the beginning of a project, and yet we design and

plan mines for the next however many years as if we already know everything we need to know,” Reynolds said. “There’s a great deal we can do to improve the support that we have as an industry by showing that we can adapt, accommodate and make changes when people need us to do that.”

Another major benefit of more flexibility in mine planning is that it might help unlock more of the critical minerals needed for the energy transition. While Canada is working hard to be a global leader in this space, there is still a long period of time between finding mineral deposits and developing them into mines.

“These deposits of rare earth elements, and even some other deposits of [critical metals like] zinc and nickel, [are] small,” Dunbar said. “They are not the big ‘elephants’ everybody likes to see, and we’ve got to learn to deal with those. There are a lot of deposits out there that have been claimed and [drilling done], but nobody’s interested [in developing them into mines] because [they are] just too small.”

Dunbar said if the industry needs to produce critical minerals as much as it says it does, it should be looking at innovative ways to extract the materials, such as in-situ or near-situ recovery, or perhaps bringing small mobile processing plants to the deposit—something that goes beyond traditional thinking on mine planning. “We just have to really open it up,” he said. “That’s the only way I see these deposits being exploited.”

For Dimitrakopoulos, flexibility in how mining companies assess deposits, generate strategic plans, do short-term production planning and optimize—not just an individual mine but a mining complex—can result in greater ore production and unlock significantly higher NPV.

“We have a range of possible production forecasts for key performance indicators that can be higher or lower, so we have the ability to assess what could happen in different scenarios in the future,” he explained. “If you use the more advanced methods—such as the simultaneous stochastic optimization of mining complexes and the self-learning mining complex—you can quantify risk in forecasts and plans. This is a way to improve mine plans and forecasts for any case, and to me it is also important that these developments may make marginal cases profitable, particularly for critical mineral cases.”

Looking forward to future-proofing

To get to a more flexible place for mine planning and design will require large-scale changes, not just in terms of technological development but also in terms of shifting priorities and processes. Namely, the industry will need to be receptive to new possibilities. “[The whole industry is] in a box, and we have to start getting outside that box and think about other possibilities,” Dunbar said.

In a world that is in flux, both environmentally and geopolitically, this is especially necessary. “I think we have to always go back to Charles Darwin’s quote on this, where he made clear that the survival of the fittest doesn’t mean survival of the most efficient, it means survival of the most adaptable to change,” Reynolds said.

“We are going to have to be a lot more adaptable, and every time we try to build something big and expensive with very detailed plans a long way into the future, we just make ourselves a hostage to fortune. In a world that is less [stable], flexibility has greater value, so you should be thinking more about flexibility than about efficiency.” CIM

Different by design

The world’s first greenfield in-situ copper recovery operation is set to produce first copper by the end of the year

By Ailbhe Goodbody

In the desert town of Florence, Arizona, Taseko Mines Limited is approaching a milestone—the start-up of the world’s first greenfield in-situ copper recovery (ISCR) mine. The Canadian company’s wholly owned Florence Copper project, located just over 100 kilometres southeast of Phoenix in Arizona’s historic copper corridor, is entering its final stretch before commercial production.

“Florence Copper is not a typical mining operation,” said Sean Magee, vice-president of corporate affairs at Taseko. “It employs ISCR, [which is] a low-impact copper extraction method that has long-term environmental and economic benefits.”

Taseko is currently constructing a commercial production facility at Florence Copper, with first copper production expected in the fourth quarter of this year. Once fully operational, Florence Copper’s annual production capacity will be 85 million pounds of London Metal Exchange (LME) Grade A copper cathode over a mine life of 22 years.

Unlike traditional open-pit or underground mines, the Florence Copper ISCR operation will leave the landscape largely undisturbed. Instead of moving large quantities of rock, the ISCR

operation will inject a low-pH solution (called raffinate, and comprising 99.5 per cent water and 0.5 per cent sulfuric acid) through a series of injection wells into targeted portions of a bedrock layer—called the copper oxide zone—that occurs between approximately 400 to 1,200 feet (roughly 120 to 365 metres) below surface.

The raffinate will dissolve copper minerals into a pregnant leach solution (PLS), which will be pumped to the surface by recovery wells. The PLS will then be sent to Florence Copper’s solvent extraction and electrowinning (SX/EW) processing plant, where the dissolved copper will be removed from the solution and electricity will be used to plate the copper into 99.99 per cent pure copper cathode. The solution will be recycled back into the deposit and reused.

According to Richard Tremblay, chief operating officer at Taseko, the feasibility of applying ISCR mining methods depends on a deposit’s geology and hydrology. “For copper, some key factors include the mineralization type (oxide versus sulfide), rock fracturing, transmissivity and groundwater conditions,” he said.

All 90 injection and recovery wells planned for start-up at the Florence Copper mine have been drilled and constructed.

Courtesy

The ore body at Florence Copper has all the conditions necessary to make ISCR feasible; it is naturally porous and shattered, as well as saturated with water, which means the extraction solution can easily flow through it. “While these conditions may be shown to exist in other locations, Florence Copper is currently the only proven and permitted greenfield ISCR operation in the world,” said Tremblay.

Development journey

In the 1970s, Continental Oil Company (Conoco) investigated the potential of developing a mine at the Florence Copper site, but concluded that its hydrogeological conditions made traditional open-pit or underground mining unfeasible.

Magma Copper acquired the project in 1992 and began detailed engineering on the development of an ISCR operation with an SX/EW plant. BHP acquired Magma in 1996 and continued the testwork, including commencing an ISCR pilot test. However, in 2000, BHP deferred operations at Florence Copper due to low metal prices. Curis Resources acquired the property in December 2009 and resumed project development, including engineering programs, environmental studies and community engagement in support of project permitting.

Taseko acquired the Florence Copper project in 2014 as part of its US$70 million acquisition of Curis; according to Taseko, Florence Copper’s former owners had spent over US$135 million on developing the project, and all major power, transportation, road and rail infrastructure was already in place.

Since in-situ recovery has not been extensively used for copper extraction—it is most commonly used in uranium, potash or oil sands mining—Taseko built the Florence Copper project in two phases.

The first was a production test facility that Taseko constructed at site in 2018 and began operating under commercial leaching conditions in December of that year. It included a wellfield of 13 injection and recovery wells along with a small SX/EW plant and was designed to demonstrate the operational and environmental viability of the ISCR process.

In April 2019, the production test facility made its first harvest of 3,700 pounds of copper cathode, which was assayed by an independent laboratory at higher than 99.9 per cent copper. The production test facility ceased operations in June 2020, followed by a four-month leaching ramp-down period before transitioning into a rinsing phase. Over its 18 months of operation, the production test facility produced more than one million pounds of copper.

“This work significantly de-risked the project from a technical perspective and gave us the confidence to move forward with the commercial scale facility,” said Tremblay. “The production test facility provided the Florence Copper operations team with site-specific ISCR operating experience, which will be tremendously beneficial as we begin commissioning and advance to full commercial production.”

The second phase is the commercial production facility, currently under construction; Taseko acquired the final

The first copper cathode harvest from Florence Copper’s production test facility in April 2019.

The installation of major components for Florence Copper’s solvent extraction and electrowinning plant is in progress.

Courtesy of Taseko Mines

Courtesy of Taseko Mines

underground injection control permit for the Florence Copper project from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in September 2023, and construction began in January 2024.

By the end of June this year, construction of the commercial production facility was over 90 per cent complete. All 90 injection and recovery wells planned for the construction phase have been drilled and completed, the site’s 69-kilovolt substation has been energized, and the installation of major components for the SX/EW areas is in progress.

Taseko stated in its financial and operational results for the second quarter of 2025 that approximately US$239.3 million in construction costs had been incurred over the previous 18 months. Rob Rotzinger, Taseko’s vice-president of capital projects, said the company continues to expect the final construction costs to be about 10 to 15 per cent higher than the previous 2023 estimate of US$232 million.

A low-cost, low-carbon advantage

According to Taseko, Florence Copper is one of the lowest capital intensity copper development projects in the world at under US$7,000 per tonne of annual production, compared to up to US$20,000 per tonne for other copper projects being developed in Arizona.

In addition, operating costs are forecast to be approximately US$1.11 per pound of copper, which is in the lowest quartile among global copper producers. “This cost advantage is due to the nature of the ISCR process, which avoids the high operating costs associated with conventional mining activities,” said Rotzinger.

The project’s environmental footprint is equally competitive. “At full commercial production, copper produced at Florence Copper is expected to have the lowest GHG [greenhouse gas] intensity per unit of production among primary copper producers in North America,” said Magee. “The operation does not require blasting, loading, hauling, dumping, crushing or conveying of mineralized material and waste; this contributes to 75 per

cent fewer GHG emissions, 65 per cent less energy use and 78 per cent less water consumed per unit of production than conventional open-pit copper mines in Arizona.”

Producing the copper cathode on site will also contribute to the project’s lower GHG intensity. “This eliminates the need to ship copper concentrate to smelters and refineries overseas, resulting in lower costs, fewer emissions and less waste,” said Magee. He added that Florence Copper will “substantially” lower the company’s enterprise-wide GHG intensity.

Protecting the integrity of regional groundwater sources is a critical requirement for successful ISCR operations, Magee said. “This is achieved at Florence Copper by maintaining hydraulic control of injected solutions at all times through carefully managed pumping rates [which creates an inward hydraulic gradient towards the wellfield that prevents solutions from moving out of the leaching area] and the deployment of a robust system of monitoring and compliance wells,” he said.

In addition to ideal conditions for hydraulic control of solutions, there are also geological barriers to solution migration at Florence Copper. There is a thick clay layer above the ore body that acts as an aquitard—a protective barrier—preventing solution from moving up into the upper aquifer. The oxide zone is also separated from deeper groundwater by a relatively impervious sulfide system. The injection and recovery wells used in the ISCR process are cased with a high-impact, corrosive-resistant pipe, and the annulus around the casing is fully sealed using type V cement from surface to 40 feet (about 12 metres) into the copper oxide zone—Florence Copper’s EPA permit requires that the wells extend this far into the bedrock to guarantee that the injected solutions remain entirely in the copper oxide zone.

In addition to evaporation of excess process water, Florence Copper has implemented a water conservation program on site. “Earlier this year, Florence Copper received authorization from the State of Arizona to utilize treated surplus process water that meets relevant water quality standards for agricultural use to supplement a local farmer’s annual irrigation needs,” said Magee.

“The Florence Copper site encompasses more than 1,300 acres, approximately 25 per cent of which is leased to a local farmer for alfalfa production. Surplus water provided to this farmer for irrigation purposes meets state water quality standards for irrigation and will supplement valuable regional water sources while contributing to local agricultural production.”

Taseko also integrated comprehensive reclamation planning into the earliest stages of the mine’s development. The Florence Copper reclamation plan includes wellfield closure, infrastructure removal and land surface restoration to ensure

Construction of the commercial production facility at Florence Copper was over 90 per cent complete by the end of June.

The Florence Copper project’s proven and probable reserve estimate as of December 31, 2024.

the site is returned to a safe, stable and productive condition following the completion of operations. “All production and recovery wells will be decommissioned and sealed in accordance with state and federal regulations,” said Magee. “Aquifer rinsing [will] return in-situ water qualities to pre-leaching conditions or values as specified in the permit [from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality].”

Since ISCR minimizes surface disturbance and alterations, there will be no tailings pond or waste dumps to reclaim at the end of the mine’s life. “The site can be used for parks, housing, farming or other purposes that may be determined by future owners and governments,” said Magee.

An economic powerhouse

With the transition to commissioning in progress and first production just months away, Florence Copper is set to ramp up to its full 85-million-pound annual capacity. Future wellfield expansions will sustain production through the mine’s planned 22-year life, cementing its role as a key supplier of low-carbon copper for the domestic market. Magee said that at full commercial production, Florence Copper will be the third-largest copper cathode producer in the United States.

The project’s impact will extend well beyond its fences. Over its life of mine, Magee said that Florence Copper is expected to contribute US$4.3 billion to Arizona’s gross domestic product, generate US$2.2 billion in personal income for individuals and families, and provide more than US$593

million in state and local tax revenues—over half of that flowing directly to Pinal County and the town of Florence. At full operation, Taseko estimates the mine will support roughly 820 direct and spinoff jobs annually.

Magee noted that the operation’s location in Arizona offers several advantages. “With a strong and growing presence of electric vehicle and semiconductor manufacturers in the region, and solar power playing a major role in the state’s energy mix, Florence Copper is well positioned to serve key cleantech markets,” he said. “Local production and direct truck transport to end users will avoid the long-distance overseas shipping that many other copper producers rely on. Florence Copper will deliver a domestically produced, ready-to-use supply of copper metal directly to the American market.”

It is also a particularly good time to be bringing a new copper mine to production. According to the International Energy Agency’s 2025 global critical minerals outlook, the current copper mine project pipeline indicates that there could be a 30 per cent global supply shortfall by 2035. In the United States, COMEX copper prices reached a record high in July due to potential tariffs of up to 50 per cent on imported copper.

“Considering the current state of geopolitical and trade uncertainty, ensuring a secure supply of critical minerals in North America has never been more important,” said Magee. “Copper is essential to both Canada’s and the United States’ economic and manufacturing resilience, underpinning key sectors tied to defence, national security and the clean energy transition.” CIM

Better mine airflow

Advancements in ventilation technologies are reshaping underground mining for safety, efficiency and cost savings

By Mehanaz Yakub

Ventilation serves multiple purposes in underground mines. It delivers fresh oxygen to workers, dilutes and removes hazardous contaminants and helps to control temperature and humidity in the most extreme conditions. Without an effective ventilation infrastructure and system, miners can be exposed to dangerous concentrations of toxic gases and dust, which can cause severe health risks.

Traditional mine ventilation systems, which often rely on fixed schedules and manual adjustments, struggle to keep pace with the dynamic conditions underground. This not only drives up a mine’s total energy consumption but can also account for a significant portion of operational costs.

Ventilation solution providers are advancing ventilation technologies to meet the demands of modern mining. Each of their innovations, in part, helps enable operators to deliver fresh air deeper underground, while monitoring, controlling and optimizing airflow in real time to ensure that air is delivered exactly where and when it is needed.

Efficient fans

The core infrastructure of any ventilation system is the network of fans that provide and regulate the flow of fresh air underground while removing exhaust gases, heat and dust. Minetek has developed its Raptor series of fans, which includes a primary and secondary fan for underground operations.

The roles of these fans are essential. The primary fan is the backbone of a fan system, explained Jeremy Sutherland, underground mining ventilation manager at Minetek. Sutherland

ABB Ability Ventilation Optimizer learns from the mine’s operational patterns to provide ventilation on demand.

compared the primary fan to the main road from surface to the bottom of the mine. “That’s what the primary fan does. It draws air from the surface all the way to the bottom, and then takes it back out,” he said.

The secondary fan functions more like an off-ramp. “The secondary fan pulls the air off the primary circuit into that working face, pushes it to the end, and then it returns to the primary circuit before heading back to the base,” he said.

In July this year, Minetek launched its Raptor series secondary fan to address a gap the company had identified in the market where existing fan models could not push air far enough into the working face without requiring multiple units.

“Normally, once you get over a certain length in a drive— say, three or four hundred metres—you have to put up another fan to push the air further. We decided to develop a fan that could go the full distance with just one unit,” said Sutherland. The result was a mixed flow fan—a first for secondary ventilation applications—allowing mines to maintain uninterrupted production for much longer stretches.

In the highly competitive underground ventilation market, differentiating one fan from another can be challenging.

“A fan is a motor, it’s an impeller, and it moves air—so what can you do that’s better?” asked Sutherland. “It’s motor efficiencies and airflow efficiencies. Then, when supplying fans and building fans, you need to make them easy for the end user.”

The Raptor series was built with an efficiency-driven design. “Our Raptor series is lighter, it’s shorter and it has less installed kilowatts for the same performance as other fans on the market, making it a lot quicker to install,” said Sutherland. “What that equates to in installation fees is huge in dollar [savings].”

Minetek’s primary fans are direct drive, meaning the motor is integrated into the fan itself. In many competing systems, the motor is external to the fan, requiring the fan to be built onsite—a process that can take up to six months. By contrast, Minetek manufactures and tests its fans in-house before shipping them to the site as complete units. This approach enables rapid deployment.

At a gold mine in Western Australia, Minetek was hired to replace underperforming fans. The company’s pre-assembled units “were installed, commissioned and fully operational in just three and a half days,” Sutherland said, adding that the speed took the market by surprise.

“We don’t do it that quickly every time, but it shows the way that we build our fans, test them at our warehouse and our manufacturing plant first, then when we get to the site, we can be in and out extremely quickly and efficiently,” he said.

Optimizing ventilation

ABB takes a holistic approach to mine ventilation with its ABB Ability Ventilation Optimizer, a complete control solution that integrates ventilation on demand (VOD) functionality. By combining a tracking and tagging system with environmental and flow sensors, the system is designed to ensure that ventilation is delivered only where and when it is needed. Vehicles and personnel are equipped with transmitters or tags carrying unique IDs, allowing the system to detect their presence and automatically adjust airflow volumes based on preprogrammed requirements.

The system’s capabilities expand further when paired with model-based control, which uses continuous feedback from sensors to dynamically adjust airflow in real time. Data from

all sensors, along with fan speed, status and regulator performance, is fed into a central control system. From there, operators, engineers and mine managers can monitor and control the entire network from mobile devices.

Over time, the optimizer learns from the mine’s operational patterns.

“The system learns how to deliver optimized ventilation based on where the people are, where the equipment is, the operating conditions and the production schedules,” said Sachin Jari, general manager of mining for North America at ABB. “You look at what’s going on, and you have control algorithms to provide optimization.”

The result is substantial efficiency gains. According to ABB, dynamically ventilating only active areas can cut energy consumption by 30 to 50 per cent, translating to around US$2 million to US$3 million in annual savings for a typical large mine. Reduced wear on ventilation equipment and improved air quality also contribute to a longer lifespan for the equipment and a safer and healthier working environment.

Jari highlighted openness as a core feature of ABB Ability Ventilation Optimizer. “It’s an open system—we’re not limited to saying you must have this from ABB or that from ABB,” he said. “Our value is really the application knowledge.”

There are three scalable implementation levels. Level 1 provides essential fan, louvre and ventilation door control and monitoring via ABB’s 800xA System, coupled with air quality and airflow sensors to improve safety and reduce energy costs.

Level 2 delivers a full-scale VOD solution, automatically adjusting all controllable ventilation infrastructure to improve air quality.

Lastly, Level 3 adds ABB’s SmartAir Optimizer, using realtime airflow sensor feedback to fine-tune main fan operation for true mine-wide ventilation optimization.

“The three levels are valuable for different mining conditions and investment perspectives,” Jari explained. “Sometimes, people just want a very basic control system—they don’t need an advanced optimization level.”

It’s possible for a customer to scale up from one level to the next, he added.

“This is a fundamental part of the design,” explained Jari. “As you operate and gain more confidence and experience,

Minetek launched its Raptor series secondary fan to help push air provided by the primary fan deeper into the mine.

Courtesy of Minetek

you can add software capabilities and progress through the different levels.”

Modelling and controlling

Underground mines are constantly experiencing changing ventilation environments, from airflow shifts to pressure rises and falls, temperature fluctuations and circulation of contaminants. “To understand all of this, there’s no better way than visually,” said Jose Pinedo, sales manager at Ventsim, a Chart Industries company.

Ventsim’s advanced 3D simulation platform, Ventsim Design, models and simulates complex underground conditions, from airflows, pressures, heat, gases and radon to fire scenarios.

“Today, a simulation tool has become something that is essential to every single operating mine, because they need to be able to determine not just what’s happening today, but what’s going to happen in the future,” Pinedo explained.

Reliable models allow mines to plan ventilation over the short, medium and long term. This is critical for major infrastructure decisions.

“For example, something that’s extremely expensive is driving a ventilation raise,” said Pinedo. “You want to be able to do right the first time because if, in five or 10 years, you realize that you under designed it, it’s not as simple as saying, ‘we’re just going to put more air through that raise’ or ‘we’re going to buy a bigger fan’ because you can’t always do that.”

The latest version of Ventsim Design, released in 2023, has several modelling and simulation features. It can simulate contaminants such as diesel particulate matter, model the gas dispersion following a blast, and run fire simulations.

“For emergency preparedness, mines will go through worstcase scenarios. For example, if you want to see where the smoke might go, or see what would happen if there were a loss of power and your fans stopped working. The simulation tool will allow you to [do that],” Pinedo said.

The software can also incorporate manual ventilation survey measurements into the simulation, to help verify whether the model aligns with reality and fine-tune it for minimal error.

Complementing the planning power of Ventsim Design is Ventsim Control, the company’s software that can remotely monitor, control and automate airflow, heating and cooling to deliver safer, more productive and lower-cost ventilation for mines.

While the two products integrate seamlessly, Ventsim Control can be a standalone system programmed specifically for ventilation optimization.

The software offers five progressive levels of control. At the most basic level is the manual remote control of equipment such as a fan, a regulator or a door. This level can be integrated with Ventsim Design, allowing users to simulate and project different modelling outcomes.

Level two introduces automated scheduling, where ventilation settings change according to pre-programmed events such as shift changes or blasting, ensuring airflow is provided only in certain areas of the mine during specific times.

Level three adds flow and gas sensor integration, where it can automatically control setpoints for airflow for fans, gas concentrations and temperature, using PID control loops (a feedback control system that uses a mathematical algorithm to calculate error between the desired setpoint and a measured process value) to reach the most desired conditions. The gas bias control feature can also increase airflow to dilute high gas levels in specific areas.

Ventilation on demand is level four of the control system. In this mode, Ventsim Control adjusts ventilation dynamically based on the real-time location of personnel and equipment. Achieving full VOD requires enabling infrastructure such as reliable communications networks (fibre, LTE or 5G), PLCconnected hardware, environmental monitoring stations and advanced tracking systems. This integration automatically tailors ventilation to the mine’s exact needs.

At the highest level, optimization algorithms fine-tune the operation of primary fans to achieve optimal airflow distribution while reducing network resistance to airflow. This can help decrease the energy consumption of the mine and save thousands of operational dollars. CIM

Ventsim Control is designed to remotely monitor, control and automate airflow in underground mines.

Jon Benjamin Photography

Growing up in a family in the mining industry, Annabelle Rioux saw first-hand the impact that people in the industry can make. “My family inspired me,” she said. “[They made] me feel like we can make a difference in an organization and in a community.”

After spending summers between semesters working in human resources (HR) at Agnico Eagle Mines—the same company where her father, uncles and cousin worked—Rioux earned her Bachelor of Business Administration from the School of Management Sciences at Université du Québec à Montréal in 2011. Her first experience after graduating was a six-month internship at Agnico Eagle’s Meadowbank mine in Nunavut. After her internship, she returned to Quebec to work as an HR advisor at the company’s Goldex and LaRonde complexes, gaining experience with both underground and mill operations.

After over seven years at Agnico Eagle, Rioux made the leap to join Integra Gold in 2017, before it was acquired by Eldorado Gold that same year and became Eldorado Gold Québec. As an HR senior coordinator, Rioux played a significant role in the start-up of the company’s Lamaque gold mine in Val-d’Or in 2019, making sure HR processes and labour relations were strong from the start of operations.

According to Rioux, the transition from a large-scale mining company to a start-up company felt like a significant change and an even bigger achievement for her. “It was a big decision because all of my family was working for the same company for many years, but I did [it] to grow and see other things in my career,” she explained. “[We came in as] a junior, but now we are a mid-size company and I’m proud of taking that opportunity in my life.”

At Eldorado Gold Québec, Rioux has handled a gamut of HR tasks, from strategy and laying the foundations for the department, to recruitment, helping scale the company’s workforce from 40 to around 550 employees today. Promoted to her current position as HR director in 2024, Rioux introduced a new HR

We are profiling CIM-Bedford Canadian Young Mining Leaders Award winners to learn how they are shaping the future of the industry. Meet Annabelle Rioux.

A people person

By Tijana Mitrovic

identity and guiding principles that positioned HR as a strategic partner within the organization, recruited a health and wellbeing consultant and led a restructuring of her team.

“I spend a lot of time managing the team, making sure all [of our] resources are in a good place, and understanding the market and [the company’s] place in the market,” she said. “We have a highly competitive market in [Val-d’Or], so we have to be agile and proactive and do things differently.” Her efforts have not gone unnoticed—in 2024, Rioux and her team won the Human Resources Distinction Award from the Quebec Mining Association for its work in digitizing operational training and developing an e-learning platform for employees to use for training.

Over the years, Rioux has also heavily contributed to her community. She was involved with CIM’s Val-d’Or branch, including three years as its president, and was an active contributor to Quebec’s Mining Week. She also led the Kiwanis-Lemieux Club as president in 2019 and is involved in a local club for women in business. “This is part of our life,” she said. “Val-d’Or is a gold mining city. There are a lot of people who are working in [mining], and I am proud to work in the industry.”

Looking ahead, Rioux is focused on elevating the company’s HR practices and ensuring Eldorado Gold Québec is an employer of choice in the region. She is looking to advance diversity and inclusion, make the company more efficient and agile and increase the maturity of the department’s practices and tools. “We are still a young company,” she said. “But I have the motivation to push and go higher and bring the team with me.”

Above all, Rioux is motivated to empower others and make a difference. “I like to create opportunities for others,” she said. “I just want to [bring] people together, collaborate and lead a team to have a bigger, significant impact.”

CIM

See CIM Magazine’s November issue for the next profile in the series.

A Keevil family legacy

Norman

B. Keevil Jr. has created an endowment in his brothers’ names to help Indigenous students to pursue a career in mining

By Michele Beacom

Anew endowment is funding CIM Foundation’s Taking Flight grant program for Indigenous high school and post-secondary students who wish to pursue a career in the mining industry. The Brian and Harold Keevil Endowment, created by Norman B. Keevil Jr. and Halley Keevil, Brian’s daughter, will fund in perpetuity annual grants for Indigenous students.

Asked how he came to choose the Taking Flight program for this endowment, Norman B. Keevil Jr. said, “I was at the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame dinner in 2023 when Alex Davidson was inducted and the Alex & Gillian Davidson Family Endowment for Indigenous students was announced. I told Alex then

A strong year for the CIM Foundation

The 2024 fiscal year was an exceptional year for the CIM Foundation, marked by robust financial performance, successful operational transitions and continued donor support.

Net assets rose by $723,000 to reach $3.98 million, driven largely by strong investment returns exceeding 13 per cent, and ending the year with a market value of $4.96 million. The scholarship fund saw a notable increase of $450,000, bringing its total to $1.97 million, with substantial contributions from the Jim Popowich and H.A. Steane awards. The general fund also grew by $271,000, while the reserve fund experienced a modest rise.

Total revenue reached $1.11 million, which is a $362,000 increase over the previous year, thanks to increased donations and investment income. Expenditures rose by $52,000 to $391,094, largely due to higher professional service costs, investment counsel fees tied to fund growth, and travel for a special student support program. The funds managed for CIM societies rose to $954,326, a two per cent increase. The year closed with an excess of revenue over expenditures totalling $723,131.

that the Keevil family would like to do something similar, to help expand on his work.”

After discussions with CIM Foundation manager Deborah Smith-Sauvé and president Tom Broddy, the Keevil Holding Corporation (KHC, the majority shareholder in Teck Resources) created a similar $1 million endowment in the name of Keevil’s two late brothers, Brian and Harold.

The Keevils—Norman B. Keevil Sr. and sons Norman B. Jr; Brian, who passed away prematurely over 30 years ago; and Harold, who had been a Teck director before passing earlier this year—developed Teck into one of the largest Canadian mining companies today.

The Brian and Harold Keevil Endowment, managed by the CIM Foundation with guidance from Halley Keevil, will fund annual grants of $5,000 each to seven qualifying students, beginning this fall. The purpose of this support is to encourage Indigenous students to pursue higher education so they can work in their regions earning a good salary as well as contributing to the betterment of their communities and preservation of their culture. “My thanks to Alex Davidson for encouraging KHC to expand upon his contribution, and my personal encouragement to all those students who we will be able to assist through this program,” added Norman B. Keevil Jr.

Going forward, the Davidson grants will be awarded in the spring and the Keevil grants in the fall. The application deadline for the fall is Oct. 15.

The successful candidates will be announced and grants will be awarded by Dec. 31. CIM

In 2024, two new endowments were established and created in memory of Jim Popowich. These endowments—one relating to health and safety and the other to new technologies—provide financial assistance to advance the careers of Canadian mining professionals.

Operationally, the foundation completed its migration from CIM’s financial services to in-house management and welcomed new manager Neal Young. Young worked with CIM Magazine’s advertising sales team for nine years, and then most recently as CIM’s student engagement specialist.

After 15 very successful years as manager for the CIM Foundation, Deborah Smith-Sauvé is retiring but will continue to provide support and guidance during a transition period.

Overall, 2024 stands out as a very positive year—financially and strategically—laying strong groundwork for continued impact.

For more information on setting up a scholarship or making a donation, please contact Neal Young at: nyoung@cimfoundation.ca.

Brian Keevil (left) and Harold Keevil (right) at the family retreat on Lake Temagami, Ontario. It is there that the Keevil brothers learned to respect the unspoiled land and the Indigenous people in the local communities. It is also the site of their father Norman B. Keevil Sr.’s discovery of the Temagami copper deposit that would lead to the founding of Teck Corporation, now called Teck Resources.

Courtesy of Norman B. Keevil Jr.

We would like to thank all attendees, contributors, volunteers and sponsors for their support and sharing their expertise in materials and sustainability research.

Montreal | Nov. 4-6, 2025

The Global Stage for Mining Capital Projects

Capital Projects Symposium (CPS) 2025, taking place November 4 to 6 at Centre Mont-Royal in the vibrant city of Montreal, will extend the conference series’s strong record of addressing the most critical issues facing capital projects. With uncertainty rising and global demand for metals and minerals accelerating, it is more important than ever for us to work together—across disciplines, companies and communities—to stay ahead of the trends, learn from the past and ensure the best possible mining project outcomes.

This year, our opening day training workshops will feature a variety of topics designed to address current industry challenges and practices. The workshops are available to both conference registrants and non-registrants.

Our 2025 comprehensive program, which takes place over the following two days, will focus on understanding and mitigating risk in a complex and changing environment, unlocking value from the next generation of mines and leveraging collaboration to drive innovation and project success.

CPS o昀ers networking opportunities throughout so that a琀endees can keep the conversation going with peers, project leaders, technical and 昀nancial experts, and other executives long a昀er the speaker has le昀 the podium.

On behalf of the organizing commi琀ee, we invite you to join us in Montreal to share insights, forge partnerships and contribute to shaping the future of mining projects.

Jacqueline Allison Board Chair at Canstar Resources and Non-Executive Director at Laramide Resources

Samantha Espley Senior Executive Advisor at Stantec and CIM Past President (2020-2021)

Candace MacGibbon President of CMac Enterprises Inc. and CIM President

Social Events

Welcome Reception

Tuesday, November 4 | 18:30-20:30

Centre Mont-Royal, 4th Floor

Networking

Cocktail Dinner

Wednesday, November 5 | 17:00-22:00

Omni Hotel – Pierre de Coubertin Hall

$50 for registered delegates |

$125 for non-registered guests

Short Course

Estimating for Non-estimators

Tuesday, November 4 | 8:00-17:00

$525 | $150 for students

Technical Program

Wednesday, November 5

8:45-9:00

9:00-12:00

| Risk, value and the next generation of mines

Introduction and welcome address

Forging the Future – Collaborative Strategies for Project Development in Uncertain Times

The Power of Purpose

George Hemingway, Managing Partner, Stratalis

13:00-16:15 Financing & Development – Unlocking Value and Mitigating Risk in Mine Development

Project Success Decoded: Constants, Variables, and the Tale of Two Outcomes

Leonardo Kaid, Vice-President and General Manager North America, Fluor

Thursday, November 6

9:00-12:00 Execution Excellence – Setting Up and Driving Capital Projects to Success

13:00-16:15

On the Right Track – Transit Infrastructure Insights for Mining Project Success

Kyle Strickland, Director of Project Delivery, PGH Wong Engineering

Viveka Parm, Manager of Program Controls, Valley Metro

Lessons Learned – Real World Insights from Past Mining Projects and Case Studies

You Can’t Win Them All!

Terry MacGibbon, Chairman, Juno Corp. KEYNOTE

Join a community of students and professionals who can help you 昀nd your path and get ahead while you’re still in school. For a limited time, get access to career-building tools for 50% o昀 the regular student price.

Mentorship Program

Job Board

Networking Opportunities

Local Student-focused Events

“Being part of CIM feels like being part of a family. Everyone is so welcoming. As a student, it’s a great opportunity to be connected to the industry and to the people who are leading it. It’s not just a good opportunity, it genuinely feels good.”

Ali Fahre琀in Kuyuk

Scan and become a member for just $10. Use promo code LEAD10

Invite friends. Earn rewards. Repeat.

Ask for your referral code membership@cim.org

In mining, a well-crafted plan is the blueprint for value creation. But even the best-designed schedules can drift off course once work begins in the pit.

When that happens, it’s not just production targets that suffer. Equipment efficiency drops, sequencing is disrupted, and profitability can quickly decline.

It’s a challenge that even well-resourced Tier 1 operations face. Micromine is tackling it with Micromine Alastri, an advanced open-pit mine planning and scheduling suite that brings tactical and strategic plans together in a single platform, helping teams work from the same page—and the same plan.

Why compliance to plan matters

Compliance to plan is simple in theory: it’s how closely what’s happening in the pit matches what was scheduled. In practice, it’s a hallmark of a high-performing mine—a way to protect the value the plan was designed to deliver.

When compliance is high, short-term decisions reinforce long-term goals. When it’s low, work drifts into less critical areas, creating bottlenecks downstream. Even small deviations can snowball if they go unnoticed, making recovery costly.

Why traditional approaches fall short

At many operations, checking plan versus actual is still a manual process—often monthly, sometimes quarterly. These checks may be based on spreadsheets or summary reports that lack spatial context, and teams may be working from different sets of information.

Ben McDonald, head of open pit mining for Micromine Americas, has seen these challenges first-hand. “I’ve worked with sites that, on paper, looked like they were hitting most of their targets,” he said. “But when we looked spatially, we saw they had mined 66 per cent of a 650-kilotonne target, with much of it outside of priority zones. That might not sound bad, but it had big knock-on effects for equipment and downstream processing.”

That kind of drift, McDonald noted, can happen even in operations with strong planning frameworks. “It’s not that the team isn’t working hard—it’s that without timely, visual feedback, small deviations add up before anyone realizes what’s happening.”

From drift to discipline

Drawing on his years as a mine planner, McDonald said fragmented systems are a major barrier. “In most operations,

Closing the gap in mine planning

How new technology is aligning plans with production

planning tools are spread across different applications, which means you’re constantly switching between systems,” he explained. “With Micromine Alastri, everything’s in one place. You can see weekly, interactive 3D comparisons between your plan and the surveyed pit, linked directly to both tactical and medium- to long-term plans. That level of integration is a step change for mine planners.”

He pointed back to the earlier example, where work had shifted into lower-priority areas and equipment efficiency suffered. “Once the site began using Micromine Alastri for weekly compliance tracking, they started with a score of just 43 per cent and improved steadily. Within weeks, short-term execution was back in line with long-term priorities, equipment performance recovered, and downstream disruptions were reduced,” he said

With a single, shared view of progress, everyone—from engineers to supervisors—works from the same picture. “Compliance becomes a live KPI that’s visible across the team, so you can correct small deviations before they turn into big problems,” he added.

A change in mindset

For McDonald, the real benefit is as much cultural as technical.

“When compliance to plan becomes visible and measurable, it changes the way conversations happen,” he said. “Instead of asking, ‘Why are we behind?’ the conversation becomes, ‘What can we do now to get this back on track?’ That shift makes a huge difference to both confidence and performance.”

With connected planning tools and consistent feedback, mine plans become more than just a starting point—they become a shared commitment. When execution matches intent, the value built into the plan stays protected.

For more information on Micromine Alastri, visit www.micromine.com/alastri

Scan to access our free, on-demand mine plan compliance workshop.

Compliance dashboards in Micromine Alastri integrate tactical and strategic mine plans, helping teams identify deviations early and keep production on track.

PLAN NOW FOR EXTRACTION 2025

Kaitlin Calva

FEATURING:

This is a modi昀ed version of the article "The Stage is Set for Extraction 2025," published in the September 2025 issue of JOM: The Magazine. The article has been adapted with the permission of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS), www.tms.org.

THE WAIT IS ALMOST OVER

The highly anticipated second installment in the Extraction Meeting & Exhibition conference series is set to take place in Phoenix, Arizona, November 16–20, 2025. Featuring the 6th International Symposium on Nickel and Cobalt (Ni-Co 2025) and the 12th International Copper Conference (Copper 2025), Extraction 2025 will host several important recurring symposia while bringing new programming on emerging technologies into the fold. In particular, the meeting’s signature cross-cutting symposia intend to create a forward-looking dialogue focused on 昀nding creative solutions for issues that are shaping the industry. By pooling the technical programming and resources of the three organizing societies—the Metallurgy and Materials Society (MetSoc) of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum (CIM); the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME); and the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS)—Extraction 2025 is expected to be the largest gathering of the global extractive metallurgy community. Read on for a closer look at the programming and events scheduled for the return of this can’t-miss event.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

Truly a collaborative event, Extraction 2025 aims to bring together voices from all points in the supply chain to address the industry’s most pressing challenges. With 19 technical tracks across the three meetings, there’s something for everyone at Extraction 2025.

Copper 2025 will continue its long tradition of excellence by bringing together researchers and practitioners from around the world to share scienti昀c innovations and technical developments on copper mining, production, and fabrication. Ni-Co 2025 will convene operators, engineers, and researchers to exchange information about all aspects of current and future processing technologies for nickel and cobalt. And the cross-cutting symposia will give attendees a chance to engage in meaningful discussions on multidisciplinary topics and share their insights with experts and peers.

The technical programming will kick o昀 on Sunday, November 16, with an All-Conference Plenary Session featuring a presentation by David Anonychuk, Global Vice President, Metallurgy and Consulting, Natural Resources, Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS).

REGISTER BY OCTOBER 7 AND SAVE

Early-bird, discounted registration is available through October 7, 2025.

Don’t miss your chance to save on your registration fee. Make your plans to attend today. www.extractionmeeting.org/2025

OVERALL CONFERENCE SPONSOR

View a complete list of Extraction 2025 sponsors at www.extractionmeeting.org/2025/Sponsors.

CONNECTING WITH COLLEAGUES

In addition to the various technical programming, Extraction 2025 will o昀er attendees many opportunities to network formally and informally with their peers. One of the best places for making connections is the Exhibit Hall, opening on Sunday evening directly after the All-Conference Plenary with a welcome reception. Monday and Tuesday Exhibit Hall hours, which include afternoon lunch and evening receptions, will give attendees ample time to visit with new companies, industry professionals, innovators, and others.

New for Extraction 2025, attendees can now create a personalized agenda with the Map Your Show (MYS) Exhibitor Directory through My Show Planner. Additionally, MYS has a dynamic 昀oorplan, updated with the latest information from exhibitors, that is searchable by company name, booth number, product categories, and more. Visit the Exhibition & Sponsorship tab of the Extraction 2025 website to learn more about setting up an MYS account.

Another way to customize your Extraction 2025 experience is by attending one of the social functions planned during the event. Tickets for the Pyro Pub Night, Ni-Co Social, Extraction 2025 Conference Banquet, and Student Mixer can be added during the registration process.

For those who want to make the most of their travels to Phoenix, eight professional development courses are scheduled on Saturday, November 15, and Sunday, November 16, ahead of the technical programming.

Led by expert instructors, the courses were developed to appeal to a wide audience, both for those interested in learning more about a speci昀c process or looking for a refresher on a familiar subject.

• Hydrometallurgy: Leaching and Solvent Extraction of Copper and Battery Materials

• Fundamentals of Mineral and Metallurgical Processing

• Pyrometallurgical Processes: Furnace Integrity

• Copper Recycling: From Principles to Industrial Applications

• Designing, Using, Monitoring, and Retro昀tting Metallurgical Accounting Systems

• High Pressure Processing of Concentrates and Ores

• Metallurgical Gases – Capture, Cleaning, and Sulfuric Acid Production

• Fundamentals and Practices of Copper Electrore昀ning and Electrowinning

More details about each course and registration information can be found on the Professional Development tab of the Extraction 2025 website. While the conference dates are nearing, there is still time to take advantage of discounted rates. Early bird registration is available until October 7, 2025. Visit www.ExtractionMeeting.org/2025 to register today and ensure your voice is part of the conversation at Extraction 2025.

BOOK BY OCTOBER 14

Staying at the meeting location, the Sheraton Grand at Wild Horse Pass, is the most convenient way to experience Extraction 2025, o昀ering easy access to technical session rooms and social functions alike. The Sheraton Grand also o昀ers a wide array of resort amenities, on-site experiences, and close proximity to local attractions. A block of rooms has been reserved at the resort at a special rate for Extraction 2025 attendees. Take advantage of this savings opportunity and book your room by October 14, 2025

Please note that rooms are available on a 昀rst-come, 昀rst-served basis. Visit www. ExtractionMeeting.org/2025 for more details on room fees, bene昀ts, and to make your reservation.

Photo credit: Sheraton Grand at Wild Horse Pass

Kaitlin Calva is an independent contributor for the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS).

Septembre/OctObre 2025

54 Lettre de l’éditeur

56 Mot de la présidente

Actualité

57 Ressources Winsome résilie l’option sur la mine Renard

Par Ashley Fish-Robertson

Gestion des risques

59 Andy Low de Forsite Fire explique l’incidence des incendies de forêt sur les sites miniers et l’importance des programmes d’atténuation exhaustifs pour la résilience à long terme

Par Mehanaz Yakub

Entre art et industrie… Ou comment j’ai passé mes vacances d’été

En juin, j’achetais une copie de l’ouvrage Comment marche vraiment le monde - Le guide scientifique du passé, du présent et du futur de Vaclav Smil (traduit de l’anglais par Jacques Treiner). La description sur la jaquette est presque trompeuse par rapport au contenu de cet ouvrage. Elle le qualifie « d’analyse essentielle de la science et la technologie modernes qui façonnent nos vies au XXIe siècle ». Ce qui, certes, est judicieux, car il serait moins vendeur de le décrire de la manière suivante : « Pourquoi nous devons faire preuve de plus de circonspection quant à notre dépendance vis-à-vis du pétrole brut, du béton, de l’acier et des engrais ».

Accompagné de l’ouvrage de M. Smil qui me trottait dans la tête, je partais en Espagne pendant que le reste de l’équipe éditoriale s’attelait à la tâche et préparait ce numéro (si vous avez la chance d’atteindre 50 ans, pourquoi ne pas les fêter dignement ? Après tout, cela n’arrivera qu’une fois). C’est la raison pour laquelle, lors de l’une de mes premières étapes au musée Guggenheim de Bilbao, j’avais l’esprit occupé par la réalité matérielle des choses, et non pas simplement par la mortalité.

La plupart des gens reconnaîtront ce musée d’art contemporain visuellement à ses murs ondulant massifs composés de fines plaques de titane (un minerai extrait en Russie, traité et profilé aux États-Unis). Une installation audiovisuelle panoramique récente occupait une grande pièce à l’intérieur. Ce spectacle, créé par intelligence artificielle (IA), présentait une exposition fluide réunissant créations, textures et couleurs générées à l’aide d’une base de données d’images ajoutées à un « vaste modèle architectural ». Une séquence audio générée par IA complétait la projection lumineuse panoramique.

« S’appuyant sur des données respectueuses des principes éthiques et alimentées par des pratiques informatiques durables », indiquait la commissaire de l’exposition, « cette installation reflète une approche consciencieuse de la création numérique, où l’innovation et la responsabilité vont de pair ». À tout point de vue, cette installation était la définition même du contemporain. C’est aussi celle qui attirait le plus de monde.

L’inquiétude de M. Smil est que, dans notre économie postindustrielle axée sur les services, nous avons perdu de vue le fait que, si les logiciels sont une source de divertissement inépuisable, ce sont les combustibles fossiles et la production de matériaux à haute teneur en carbone qui aident les milliards d’humains à répondre à leurs besoins fondamentaux. En faisant abstraction de cette réalité, on renforce l’idée selon laquelle la neutralité en matière d’émissions de gaz à effet de serre dans les 25 années à venir sera possible sans effets profondément perturbateurs. Dans le même temps, il devient toujours plus difficile d’avoir des conversations fructueuses sur les moyens les plus efficaces de réduire notre bilan carbone massif.

Ainsi, l’œuvre qui s’est montrée à la hauteur des circonstances est une série d’installations permanentes de sculptures composées de magnifiques feuilles d’acier érodées. Sachant que Bilbao était un centre important de construction navale, la nature du matériau était tout aussi indispensable à l’expérience que les créations fluides en métal que l’artiste a créées.

Si la structure de l’exposition sur l’IA insistait sur l’absence d’empreinte physique, le résumé accompagnant les sculptures en acier racontait en détail la relation de plusieurs millénaires de la région avec ses gisements de fer. Présentée dans la collection permanente du Guggenheim qui existe grâce aux richesses amassées par l’exploitation minière et le traitement des métaux, cette installation affichait une conscience de ses origines que nous serions bien inspirés de prendre au sérieux.

Ryan Bergen, Rédacteur en chef editor@cim.org

Les Prix de l’ICM me琀ent à l’honneur les personnes qui sont les moteurs de notre industrie. Fêtons-les ensemble.

Les personnes nominées ne doivent pas nécessairement être membres de l’ICM au niveau national À l’exception de celles nominées pour les prix Service distingué de l'ICM et Conférenciers distingués de l'ICM.

The CIM Awards is a program owned and operated by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum.

Le programme des Prix de l’ICM appartient à l’Institut canadien des mines, de la métallurgie et du pétrole, qui le gère également.

Le paradoxe de la hausse des prix des métaux

Le vieil adage « achète quand le cours est bas, vend quand le cours est élevé » est devenu très populaire durant la période de prospérité du marché boursier du début du XXe siècle. Le problème avec ce concept dans une industrie cyclique est de déterminer le moment du pic des prix pour prendre de bonnes décisions en matière de dépense en immobilisations et de développement de projet. Chacun sait que l’industrie minière est cyclique. La surperformance récente de l’or a mis en lumière le potentiel des hausses de prix de grande ampleur.

Le prix de l’or a connu une hausse météorique cette dernière année. Depuis août 2024 et en comparaison avec les prix d’août 2025, le prix de l’once a augmenté de près de 1 000 dollars, avec un prix record de 3 500 dollars l’once enregistré en avril dernier. Le World Gold Council (WGC, le conseil mondial de l’or) a attribué l’augmentation des prix à une incertitude macroéconomique mondiale autour des droits de douane et des tensions géopolitiques, étayée par des taux d’intérêt stables et un dollar américain plus faible. La question que posent plusieurs investisseurs concerne le prix que l’or va atteindre. Je ne chercherai pas à prévoir si la hausse des prix de l’or va ralentir, ni quand. Toutefois, la tendance récente met en avant les enjeux liés à la nature cyclique des prix des métaux et à la rapidité de la hausse des prix ou de leur déclin.

Les prix du nickel ont aussi fait les montagnes russes récemment, offrant aux investisseurs et aux sociétés un frisson plus traditionnel, ou plutôt une expérience terrifiante, avec un effondrement suivant un pic. Après avoir atteint des prix record au printemps 2024, découlant de la perspective de restrictions de

l’offre et de la demande en raison de la transition vers l’électrification et le stockage des batteries, ainsi que de l’incidence des sanctions imposées aux importations de nickel russe sur les marchés boursiers américains et canadiens, une réaction rapide sur le plan de l’offre, principalement de la part de l’Indonésie, a entraîné en avril 2025 une baisse des prix record sur les cinq dernières années, plaçant une industrie en plein essor en mode de soins et maintenance. Par ailleurs, les taux d’adoption des véhicules électriques plus faibles que prévu, une production non rentable et une croissance plus lente que prévu de l’acier inoxydable ont tourmenté le cours du métal.

L’industrie des ressources est caractérisée par un investissement de capitaux coûteux et de longue durée. Dans ce contexte de tarification incertain, les sociétés sont contraintes de prendre des décisions basées sur des hypothèses de prix sur le long terme qui ont divergé des prévisions internes et des analystes. L’anticipation des investisseurs pour l’activité de fusion et acquisition est élevée. Les équipes de direction ont toutefois tiré des enseignements douloureux et savent que les investisseurs n’apprécient pas que les sociétés achètent à prix élevés et que la valeur pour l’actionnaire soit amoindrie. Les comités de direction s’intéressent de près à l’allocation du capital et aux rendements des placements lorsqu’ils évaluent les transactions potentielles. Les facteurs économiques concernant les nouveaux projets de développement sont calculés à l’aide d’une estimation des prix futurs des métaux sur le long terme, qui continuent à faire les montagnes russes. Des projets antérieurs considérés comme non rentables à des prix plus faibles commencent à être de nouveau envisagés sur la base d’hypothèses relatives à des prix plus élevés des métaux sur le long terme. Toutefois, comment les sociétés gèrent-elles le risque entourant leurs hypothèses de prix pour s’assurer de créer de la valeur pour leurs actionnaires ?

Dans notre industrie, la hausse des prix des métaux est toujours la bienvenue, pour contrer les périodes prolongées de baisses drastiques. Toutefois, les équipes de direction sont confrontées à une pression croissante pour stimuler l’offre en minéraux critiques dans le contexte actuel instable et incertain, sans aucune certitude au niveau des prix. Ce paradoxe n’est pas nouveau pour l’industrie des ressources. Pourtant, alors que des décisions en matière d’investissement sont envisagées pour de nouveaux projets de développement afin de répondre à la demande en minéraux critiques et en métaux, la question est de déterminer le prix à long terme sur lequel nous devrions nous baser.

Candace MacGibbon Présidente de l’ICM president@cim.org

Ressources Winsome résilie l’option sur la mine Renard

Par Ashley Fish-Robertson

Fin juillet, la société australienne Ressources Winsome résiliait la convention d’option d’acquisition concernant la mine de diamant Renard au Québec. Elle se retire d’une transaction qui était considérée comme essentielle pour accélérer la production de lithium à son projet phare Adina, situé à proximité, en transformant l’usine de Renard en une usine de traitement du lithium.

« Si la décision de nous départir de l’option d’acquisition de Renard n’est pas le résultat que nous avions initialement envisagé, elle reflète les réalités des conditions de marché actuelles à l’échelle mondiale », indiquait Chris Evans, directeur général de Ressources Winsome, dans une déclaration écrite à l’équipe du CIM Magazine. « Plus important encore, elle nous permet de mieux cibler nos efforts sur l’avancement de notre projet Adina de premier ordre. »

Dans un communiqué de presse, la société a cité la baisse du cours du lithium ainsi que des considérations macroéconomiques globales qui l’ont incité à

mettre fin à cette option d’acquisition. Elle reste toutefois axée sur l’avancement de sa propriété Adina, et pourrait réenvisager l’achat à l’avenir.

« Après avoir récemment reçu la directive des autorités environnementales du Québec, nous pouvons progresser vers la réalisation de l’évaluation des incidences environnementales et sociales [pour Adina] », ajoutait M. Evans. « Les dernières semaines ont montré des signes encourageants de rebondissement potentiel du marché. Winsome se positionne de manière à tirer pleinement parti de l’amélioration de ces conditions. »

Le site de la mine Renard, situé à environ 60 kilomètres au sud d’Adina, était auparavant la propriété de Stornoway Diamonds. Il a la particularité d’être la première mine de diamant du Québec. Le site comprend une usine de traitement équipée d’une installation de séparation en milieu dense, de la technologie de triage du minerai et d’un circuit de broyage.

Winsome avait initialement assuré cette option exclusive lui permettant

d’acquérir le site pour 52 millions de dollars en avril 2024, en s’acquittant de quatre millions de dollars payés à l’avance et d’un million de dollars dû à la conclusion de la transaction. Le solde devait être réglé en plusieurs versements. La dernière prolongation de l’option prend fin le 31 août.

La société déclare dans le communiqué de presse que Renard demeure « l’option la plus viable en matière d’opération, de coûts et de logistique ». Elle entend continuer de collaborer activement avec Stornoway, les gouvernements provincial et fédéral et les autres parties prenantes « afin d’explorer les possibilités de synergies entre les projets Adina et Renard ».

La construction de la mine Renard a débuté en 2014 et la production commerciale en 2017. Toutefois, Stornoway a rencontré des difficultés financières et opérationnelles dans un contexte d’incertitude des prix du diamant au niveau international et a cessé les activités en octobre 2023. La mine est depuis en mode de soins et maintenance. ICM

La première mine de diamants du Québec, la mine Renard, a été en activité jusqu’à ce que Stornoway suspend ses opérations en 2023.

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Affronter les feux

Andy Low de Forsite Fire explique

l’incidence des incendies de forêt sur les sites miniers et l’importance des programmes d’atténuation exhaustifs pour la résilience à long terme

Par Mehanaz Yakub

Andy Low est spécialiste principal des feux de végétation et professionnel agréé à Forsite Fire, un département de Forsite Consultants. Fort de 25 années d’expérience dans la gestion des incendies de forêt, M. Low a commencé sa carrière en tant que pompier luttant contre les feux de végétation. Il a travaillé dans certaines des régions du Canada parmi les plus vulnérables aux feux de forêt. Son expérience inclut la lutte contre l’incendie en rappel (descente en rappel d’un hélicoptère dans des zones autrement inaccessibles pour lutter contre les incendies) avec Parcs Canada et le programme Rattapack du British Columbia Wildfire Service (BCWS, le service de lutte contre les incendies de Colombie-Britannique), suivie de plusieurs années dans la zone d’incendie active de Penticton, dans la région d’Okanagan.

M. Low a ensuite occupé un poste d’agent provincial de préparation contre les incendies de forêt au Provincial Wildfire Coordination Centre (le centre de coordination provincial des feux de forêt) à Kamloops, avant de rejoindre John Davies à Davies Wildfire Inc. en 2017. MM. Davies et Low ont alors lancé une nouvelle société de conseil, Frontline Operations Group, en 2019. Ils ont vendu la société à Forsite Consultants en 2023, et sont désormais à la tête de l’équipe de Forsite Fire, qui se concentre sur les risques, les impacts et les stratégies d’atténuation des incendies adaptés à chaque communauté, gouvernement et client de l’industrie, dont les exploitants miniers.

Dans une conversation avec l’équipe du CIM Magazine, M. Low nous fait part de sa vision de l’évolution des risques de feux de forêt, de ce que doivent faire les exploitations minières pour comprendre les questions d’atténuation et de résilience, et du rôle des technologies émergentes pour améliorer la planification et la préparation dans des situations d’urgence.

L’ICM : Quels risques importants les incendies constituent-ils pour une exploitation minière, et quelles sont leurs incidences majeures ?

M. Low : Lorsqu’il est question de feux de forêt, nous devons faire la différence entre le stade auquel se trouve une mine et son

empreinte. Par exemple, une mine établie en exploitation est, en règle générale, résiliente face aux impacts directs des feux de forêt, car de grandes zones défrichées entourent généralement le site, et les matériaux autour du site sont souvent ininflammables, par exemple des roches, des graviers et l’espace défendable. Par espace défendable, on entend un espace entre une structure et des combustibles de végétation à proximité [des matières combustibles qui peuvent nourrir un feu, par exemple, la végétation ou toute autre matière organique]. Un espace défendable adéquat permet de ralentir ou de stopper la progression d’un incendie de forêt. [Il] offre aussi aux pompiers luttant contre les feux de végétation suffisamment d’espace autour des structures pendant les opérations de lutte contre les incendies et de protection des structures. Les bâtiments sont aussi habituellement construits avec des matériaux non combustibles tels que du métal ou du béton.

Ce sont toutes les autres choses qui pourraient se trouver dans l’empreinte de la mine qui préoccupent, à savoir les véhicules, les matériaux [ou] les débris accumulés ou non encore éliminés. Pendant un incendie de forte intensité, ce n’est pas juste une chaleur radiante, mais aussi des braises qui sont projetées loin devant un feu de cime actif. Avec un espace défendable adéquat, ce ne sont souvent pas les hautes flammes qui brûlent les bâtiments, mais les braises qui mettent le feu à certaines parties d’un bâtiment, à des matériaux ou à des combustibles à proximité. Ce feu se propagera ensuite à l’intégralité de la structure et potentiellement d’un bâtiment à l’autre.

Notre plus grande préoccupation est toutefois l’impact du feu sur les différentes infrastructures essentielles de la mine, qu’il s’agisse des routes pour le transport ou des lignes de transport et de distribution de l’électricité qui traversent de longues distances au travers de zones boisées. La menace de l’incendie ne se limite pas au site minier, mais concerne toutes ces connexions diverses dont dépend la mine.

Quelle que soit la taille ou l’ampleur d’une exploitation (qu’elle se trouve au stade de l’exploration minérale ou de la

pleine production), nous devons nous rappeler que nous évoluons dans un environnement très vulnérable aux feux de forêt et nous y sommes exposés. Les exploitants doivent comprendre et prévoir les risques de feux de forêt pour leur personnel et leurs actifs.

L’ICM : À quoi ressemble une stratégie efficace d’atténuation des risques pour les exploitations minières ?

M. Low : Nous la concevons comme un parcours vers la résilience vis-à-vis des feux de forêt, et cela commence par la quantification ou la caractérisation des risques. Lorsque nous menons une évaluation des risques, nous cherchons différents facteurs de l’environnement des feux de forêt dans lequel sont situées la mine et ses dépendances, notamment les types de combustibles, de végétation et de forêts.

Nous étudions aussi la topographie. La mine se trouve-t-elle sur un terrain plat, en haut d’une colline ou à son pied ? Qu’en est-il des lignes électriques ou des routes, sont-elles situées en terrain surélevé ou en fond de vallée ?

Nous examinons ensuite les conditions météorologiques dominantes et historiques, et les analysons à l’aide de la méthode canadienne d’évaluation des dangers d’incendie de forêt (MCEDIF). Nous analysons les codes relatifs à l’humidité des combustibles [évaluation numérique de la teneur en humidité de la couche holorganique, ou parterre forestier, et d’autres matières organiques mortes] ainsi que les indices de comportement des feux au fil du temps. Nous recherchons ensuite des tendances grandissantes, car ce sont de bons indicateurs d’une augmentation des risques.

Dans le cadre d’un programme complet d’évaluation et d’atténuation des risques de feux de forêt, la présence sur le terrain est indispensable. Une évaluation à distance reste limitée. Notre présence ou celle d’un conseiller ou d’une conseillère spécialiste des feux de forêt sur le site minier est extrêmement précieuse. Cela nous permet de mieux comprendre les principaux actifs et processus en jeu. Lorsqu’on peut se rendre sur le site et évaluer la structure des combustibles et la relation entre l’environnement bâti et l’environnement boisé, cela permet de réunir des informations concernant les risques possibles au cas où la mine serait menacée par un feu de forêt.

Nous associons donc analyse à distance et évaluation sur place. L’intégration de ces facteurs à l’activité du site nous confère un sens aigu des risques généraux pour le site et l’exploitation.

À partir de là, il s’agit de trouver des manières d’atténuer ces risques. Dans certains cas, ces atténuations peuvent être très simples. Elles peuvent porter sur le nettoyage d’un site, l’élimination de bâtiments en bois délabrés très vulnérables aux départs de feux par les braises. Il peut s’agir de retirer des matériaux inflammables des structures permanentes, ou encore d’évaluer l’intégralité du réseau routier qui relie tout à la mine ou l’électricité acheminée jusqu’à elle. Nous envisageons aussi des stratégies telles que la création ou l’augmentation de l’espace défendable en défrichant, ainsi que des possibilités d’intégrer des solutions de protection telles que des enveloppes protectrices pour les poteaux électriques en bois. Ce sont des exemples d’atténuations physiques possibles.

Pour faire le lien entre tous ces éléments, nous aidons nos clients à déterminer comment incorporer au mieux les risques

de feux de forêt dans leurs plans d’intervention en cas d’urgence. Repèrent-ils le danger d’incendie ? Sont-ils conscients du comportement possible du feu qu’ils pourraient rencontrer aujourd’hui, demain ou dans une semaine ? L’exploitation dispose ainsi des meilleures informations pour envisager la planification quotidienne et, si nécessaire, pour commencer à mettre en œuvre une intervention en cas d’urgence et prendre des décisions informées quant à la sécurité du personnel et à la protection des actifs sur le site.

L’ICM : Pouvez-vous nous donner un exemple réel d’une stratégie d’atténuation mise en œuvre par Forsite Fire, et la valeur globale qu’elle a conférée aux clients ?

M. Low : Prenons en exemple un projet que nous avons mené dans le Yukon en 2024, qui reflète bien la valeur d’une évaluation sur place avec nos propres yeux et l’importance de nous entretenir directement avec les personnes responsables des activités essentielles. Cette mine était en mode de soins et maintenance, en phase de passer à l’étape de l’assainissement. Le site présentait des problèmes de qualité de l’eau et était équipé d’un réseau de systèmes d’extrémité de ligne qui isole, détourne et capte l’eau contaminée puis l’aspire par pompe vers une usine de traitement de l’eau ou la renvoie dans un étang de retenue.

Le site est immense. La plupart des bâtiments sont situés dans un vaste paysage de roches concassées et de routes. Toutefois, les systèmes d’extrémité de ligne de captage et de pompage sont situés à l’extrémité de la mine et à proximité de la forêt. Durant le processus d’évaluation, nous avons pu nous concentrer sur la fonction la plus importante du programme de soins et maintenance, à savoir éviter que l’eau contaminée ne pénètre l’environnement.

Si les feux venaient à toucher ces sites extrêmement importants, cela pourrait entraîner une pénétration de l’eau contaminée dans l’environnement et provoquer toute sorte de problèmes. Je ne sais pas si une analyse à distance aurait pu communiquer adéquatement ce genre d’informations ni le degré d’importance que représentent ces sites. Tout ceci s’est fait grâce à notre présence physique sur le site, nos rencontres avec l’équipe d’ingénierie et notre visite du site avec elle.

L’ICM : Parmi les technologies émergentes, lesquelles, le cas échéant, ont une grande incidence sur l’avenir de l’atténuation des risques de feux de forêt ?

M. Low : Nous utilisons la modélisation du comportement et du développement de l’incendie à un haut niveau, ce qui nous permet de modéliser des milliers d’itérations de scénarios d’incendies.

Nous avons eu un autre exemple, en C.-B., où une mine était reliée à une autoroute de 60 kilomètres sur un terrain montagneux. Compte tenu de son emplacement au milieu de glaciers, de pics rocheux et de couloirs d’avalanche, la mine était bien protégée des menaces des feux de forêt. Toutefois, le plus gros facteur de risque d’incendie était la route [utilisée] pour rentrer et sortir [du site] par le personnel, pour l’acheminement de l’approvisionnement et pour l’entière chaîne d’approvisionnement.

Nous nous sommes concentrés sur cette route, et avons modélisé le comportement du feu sur la base de nos évaluations

sur place du type de combustible. Ces évaluations sont particulièrement importantes dans des zones où l’appariement des types de combustibles n’est pas idéal [là où la végétation locale n’est pas bien représentée par les catégories de types de combustibles dans la méthode canadienne de prévision du comportement des incendies de forêt (PCI)]. Nous avons ensuite effectué des modélisations afin de déterminer les incidences potentielles des feux de forêt sur la route.

De là, nous avons travaillé à rebours pour aider le client à comprendre. Si un feu commence dans certaines conditions et dans une proximité spécifique à la route, de combien de temps les personnes présentes sur le site disposeraient-elles avant de ne plus pouvoir accéder à la route, ou à quel moment l’incendie aurait-il un impact concret sur le site ?

Il est important de pouvoir donner un cadre au client. De fait, s’il comprend mieux une situation, ce dernier pourra adapter ou éclaircir son plan d’intervention en cas d’urgence.

Notre technologie permet également d’intégrer des données de détection et télémétrie par ondes lumineuses (LiDAR) dans un programme que nous appelons Fuel ID. Le combustible, la météo et la topographie sont les trois principaux éléments essentiels à l’analyse du comportement du feu. Il existe une [carte] du type de combustible pour tout le

pays, et chacune des provinces a effectué sa propre cartographie des types de combustibles.

Forsite a conçu Fuel ID comme un processus qui utilise des données LiDAR et en retire les caractéristiques des arbres et de la végétation. Cela nous permet de classifier les combustibles et de développer des couches cartographiques des combustibles à une résolution bien supérieure à celles des cartes publiques des types de combustibles du gouvernement au Canada. C’est très important, car une couche cartographique des combustibles de meilleure qualité reflète mieux ce qui se trouve réellement sur le terrain, et on obtiendra de meilleurs résultats du modèle. Fuel ID est disponible pour certaines régions de l’Alberta, de Colombie-Britannique et de Saskatchewan. Nous sommes en train d’étendre sa couverture à l’ensemble du Canada.

Les autres solutions technologiques que nous offrons sont des solutions de modélisation personnalisées que nous avons développées pour nos clients des services publics pour les aider dans leur exploitation quotidienne du réseau. Dans certains cas, ces solutions peuvent facilement être adaptées au contexte minier. À leur base se trouvent des points, des polygones et des lignes sur le paysage, qui permettent aux clients de mieux comprendre les incidences pour eux d’un feu de forêt. ICM

Les éminents conférenciers de l’ICM 2025-2026

Les conférenciers émérites de l’ICM ont été sélectionnés pour leurs réalisations dans les domaines scienti昀que, technique, de la gestion ou de l’éducation. Ils sont disponibles pour faire des présentations lors d’événements organisés par les branches de l’ICM, les sociétés techniques, les sections étudiantes et les universités.

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La fondation de l’ICM (FICM), permet au programme des éminents conférenciers de l’ICM de me琀re en relation les membres de l’ICM dotés d’une expertise de premier plan dans l’industrie. Le programme est détenu et géré par l’Institut canadien des mines, de la métallurgie et du pétrole (ICM).

CIM Journal

Abstracts from CIM Journal, Vol. 15, No. 2

METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

A review of past and present developments of the horizontal single belt casting (HSBC) process

D. R. Gonzalez-Morales, M. M. Isac, and R. I. L. Guthrie, Mining and Materials Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Horizontal single belt casting (HSBC) has proven to be a viable future alternative to traditional casting processes (e.g. direct chill and conventional continuous casting for aluminum and steel, respectively). The present paper summarizes HSBC developments in Canada since the 1980s. Theoretical and experimental work is summarized to provide the necessary processing parameters needed to cast a wide range of alloys at pilot and industrial scales. Compared to conventional casting technologies, it is anticipated that HSBC will be a far more versatile, economical, and environmentally friendly method that will also reduce carbon dioxide emissions from metallurgical industries. The effects of air gap dimensions and belt speeds on the stability of the “back meniscus” were also studied for a doubleimpingement metal feeding system to cast AA2024 aluminum alloy. Using ANSYS Fluent 19.1 computational fluid dynamics software, various combinations of these process parameters were tested to obtain optimum results for promoting back-meniscus stability and assess the effects of these parameters on other phenomena (e.g. air entrainment).

MAINTENANCE,

ENGINEERING AND RELIABILITY

CanmetMINING battery electric vehicle field test series: Relay utility vehicle

G. Li, J. Le, E. Acuña-Duhart, M. Levesque, E. Tomini, NRCan-CanmetMINING, Sudbury, Canada; A. Mohsenimanesh, H. Ribberink, NRCan-CanmetENERGY, Ottawa, Canada; P. Summers, Miller Technology Inc., North Bay, Canada

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) have been used increasingly in Canadian mines to replace conventional internal combustion engine vehicles due to their high efficiency, low heat production, and zero emissions locally. To help understand BEV technology, performance, and energy consumed under different work conditions, CanmetMINING and CanmetENERGY conducted a series of tests on the Miller Technology Relay BEV at Vale’s North Mine site in Ontario, Canada. The 1.25-km test route comprises uphill and downhill sections with flat (0%), 5%, 10%, and 20% inclination grades. The BEV was driven through the route in both directions to complete multiple 2.5-km laps at 5 and 15 km/h while loaded and empty. This paper presents test results normalized by distance, including energy consumed and captured tabulated by inclination grade, speed, and load. The consumed and captured energy ranged from −1.4 to 4.5 kWh/km at 5 km/h and from −2.0 to 3.7 kWh/km at 15 km/h. The battery charging data and variation in state of charge are also presented to describe the energy balance during BEV operation. A vehicle energy model calibrated against the field test data was used to estimate the energy consumption of a utility BEV operated in an underground mine.

THE RUSH FOR SASKATCHEWA N’S URANIUM

The origin stories of our industry are contained within the digital archives of the CIM Bulletin, the predecessor to CIM Magazine. In this issue, we look at the development of Saskatchewan’s first uranium mining region in Beaverlodge

By Ailbhe Goodbody

The Beaverlodge area of northern Saskatchewan has a significant history of uranium discovery and development. While initial interest in the region was for gold, the presence of radioactive minerals was noted early on.

“In the summer of 1934, gold was discovered on Lodge Bay, on the north shore of Lake Athabasca in northern Saskatchewan, about fifty miles east of the Alberta boundary line,” wrote F.J. Alcock (CIM Bulletin, 1936). “The first claims were taken up by the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada [Cominco], and there was a ‘rush’ to locate similar showings.”

In summer 1935, this area was named Goldfields, Alcock wrote, reflecting the expectation that this area of Saskatchewan would become a new gold mining hub.

“Occurrences of galena and sphalerite are known in the region, and during the past summer a discovery of pitchblende was made two miles east of Goldfields,” he wrote. “Though these showings are of interest, they are apparently too small to be developed economically. The future of the region, from the mineral point of view, appears to rest with the gold deposits.”

A.M. Christie and S.N. Kesten (CIM Bulletin, December 1949) recorded that this initial radioactive mineral discovery was at Cominco’s Nicholson property.

Cominco’s Box gold mine opened in Goldfields in June 1939 but closed less than three years later. “Mining came to an end in [May] 1942 as a result of the low grade of the ore and the changed economy of the war years,” wrote S.C. Robinson (CIM Bulletin, April 1952).

However, according to Christie and Kesten (1949), one minor occurrence of the uranium mineral, thucholite, was reported from the Box mine during its period of operation.

The Beaverlodge area received renewed attention in the 1940s due to an increase in uranium demand during the Second World War. “In September 1943, all discoveries of radioactive minerals were reserved to the Crown and their staking by private interests was banned,” wrote

David S. Robertson (Uranium Deposits of Canada, CIM Special Volume 33, 1986).

In January 1944, the Canadian government nationalized Eldorado Gold Mines—which had reopened its Port Radium mine in the Northwest Territories in 1942 to supply uranium for the Manhattan Project (see the August 2025 issue)—as a Crown company. In 1945, it began an intensive prospecting programme in the Beaverlodge area.

After the end of the war, both the United States and the United Kingdom still required large amounts of uranium. In 1948, the federal government repealed the ban on public prospecting for uranium. “Shortly thereafter, the Government of Saskatchewan established the concession system of leasing prospecting rights,” wrote Robinson (1952).

On Aug. 4, 1952, the ground not retained by the concession holders came open for general staking, wrote A.H. Lang (CIM Bulletin, May 1953). “About 250 persons took part in a staking ‘rush,’ some were amateurs, some were experienced prospectors, and some were representatives of companies, previously active in the region, that wished to enlarge their holdings,” he wrote. “About 1,000 claims were staked, bringing the total number of claims in the region to about 3,000, in about 175 groups.”

Development of Beaverlodge

According to Lang (CIM Bulletin, August 1950), the Goldfields or Beaverlodge region contained the most important uranium deposits found in Canada since the Eldorado mine at Port Radium. “Extensive development work was done on several of the discoveries in 1948 and 1949, substantial camps were built at the Nicholson and Eldorado properties, and roads were built to connect the principal operations with the barge route from Waterways,” he wrote.

In 1949, Eldorado sank two prospect shafts at its Ace and Eagle properties, and decided to initially concentrate resources on developing the Ace property; it was later developed into the larger Beaverlodge operation that also incorporated Eldorado’s nearby Fay and Verna properties.

Mining the archives

“The work at the Ace [property] was particularly encouraging,” wrote Lang (1953). “The company announced in 1951 that it was possible to forecast an operation with a minimum of 500 tons a day, with good prospects of a larger tonnage.”

Lang (1953) mentioned that about 800 men were employed in constructing the Ace mine in preparation for production in early 1953, and that three new communities were growing in the district. “The Eldorado company has nearly completed a large camp at Beaverlodge Lake, including modern homes for its staff, a school and a hospital,” he wrote. “A smaller settlement at the beginning of the road has been named Bushell. About midway between Beaverlodge and Bushell the Saskatchewan authorities have laid out a large townsite, called Uranium City.”

Carbonate leaching

Unlike ore from Port Radium, ore from the Beaverlodge operation had a high calcite content, making it unsuitable for acid leaching processes. John Convey and L.E. Djingheuzian (CIM Bulletin, April 1965) quoted P. L. Stevenson’s description of the Mines Branch’s research in Ottawa: “A sulfuric acid leach was introduced at Port Radium, but at Beaverlodge a high-pressure, high-temperature carbonate leach was initiated.”

A.D. Turnbull (CIM Bulletin, April 1963) described the development of the acid leach process and the carbonate leach process for recovering uranium as one of the important developments on the Canadian scene in recent years. “The application of these processes on a large scale meant research on many problems of corrosion and abrasion as well as on the basic chemistry of the processes,” he wrote. “At Beaverlodge, for example, a serious corrosion problem was overcome by a method of alkalinity control, which was developed in laboratory studies.”

J.A.H. Paterson (CIM Bulletin, July 1953) mentioned that in early 1953, “after the expenditure of probably more than $15 million, the first 500-ton unit of a 2,000-ton capacity production plant will begin operation at Beaverlodge.”

Mill production began in April 1953 using stockpiled underground development ore, according to E.E.N. Smith

(SV 33, 1986). “Initial underground production came from the Ace-Fay footwall orebodies to which was added Verna hanging wall ore beginning in 1957,” he wrote.

H.E. Lake and J. Russell (CIM Bulletin, October 1956) recorded that the mill was due to increase capacity from 700 tons to 2,000 tons per day and that “the present plant will be considerably altered within the ensuing year to handle the increased tonnage and distribution.”

The Beaverlodge operation implemented the adoption of mill tailings for underground backfill, starting in 1954. “Mining and milling commenced in June 1953, using locally available sand as backfill, while testwork and installation of a plant was carried out to prepare and deliver the tailings to the mining areas,” wrote Lake and Russell (1956). “The first use of tailings was made in February 1954, a sand slime separation being carried out with hydraulic cyclones.”

End of the uranium boom

“At the end of 1959, the [uranium] boom ended when the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, our biggest customer, announced it would not take up its option on further supplies of Canadian uranium,” wrote M.C. Campbell, G.M. Ritcey and W.A. Gow (CIM Bulletin, March 1985).

This resulted in the closure of all of the small producers in the Beaverlodge area, leaving only Eldorado’s Beaverlodge operation and Gunnar Mines’ Gunnar operation open. “The Gunnar orebody was depleted in 1963, and at present Eldorado Nuclear is the sole producer,” wrote J.S. Beck (CIM Bulletin, March 1970).

Uranium demand dropped again in the early 1980s.

“Cutbacks in nuclear power development plans, due somewhat to energy conservation programs, led to reduced demand for uranium and rapidly dropping export prices,” wrote Campbell et al (1985). “This resulted in mine closures and a general malaise.”

The closure of the Beaverlodge operation was announced in 1981, due to “declining ore grade and mill recoveries, and increasing production costs,” wrote R.L.J. Phillips, K.T. Himbeault, B.J. Topp, B.E. Halbert and S.L. Fernandes (CIM Bulletin, November/December 2000).

“The mill ceased production in August 1982, and decommissioning was completed in 1985.”

Between 1953 and 1982, the Beaverlodge mill had recovered 21,457,947 kilograms of U3O8, wrote Smith (1986).

In 1988, Eldorado merged with the Saskatchewan Mining Development Corporation to form Cameco Corporation. On behalf of the federal government, Cameco manages the decommissioned Beaverlodge mine and mill site, conducting environmental monitoring, environmental investigations and maintenance work.

According to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, “Beaverlodge was the first uranium mining site in Canada to submit a formal decommissioning plan and to be decommissioned under an Atomic Energy Control Board licence.” CIM

Eldorado’s Beaverlodge camp in 1952 (CIM Bulletin, May 1953).

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