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Several cutting-edge research projects aimed at advancing the mining industry are under way across the province of Ontario
By Kelsey Rolfe
Fortuna Silver Mines’ Séguéla starts lowcost high-grade operation while exploration continues to strike gold
By Dinah Zeldin
MAY 2023 | MAI 2023
In each issue
8 Editor’s letter
10 President’s notes
Tools of the trade
12 The best in new technology
Compiled by Julianna Martinek
Developments
14 Budget 2023 includes clean tech investment, support for Indigenous consultation
By Matthew Parizot18 Sayona Québec restarts North American Lithium project in Quebec
By Matthew Parizot
Modern miner
30 Resourceful Paths’ principal consultant Laurie Reemeyer is championing both sustainability and diversity in the mining industry
By Sara King-AbadiUnderground mining
33 How Hecla Mining developed an innovative narrow-vein underhand longhole mining method to better manage seismic events at its Lucky Friday mine
By Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco15
36 Flexible and safe, drones are working their way into underground mining operations
By Lynn Greiner
Ground control
49 Companies are turning to ground control technologies that support remote operations and provide new insights from existing data
By Tijana MitrovicCIM news
53 The CIM Awards honour industry’s finest for their outstanding contributions in various fields. Their achievements and dedication are what make Canada’s global mineral industry a force to be reckoned with
Contenu francophone
57 Table des matières
57 Lettre de l’éditeur
58 Mot du président
Profil de projet
59 Des perspectives de croissance
La mine de Séguéla de Fortuna Silver Mines commence l’exploitation à haute teneur et à bas prix alors que se poursuit l’exploration, en quête d’or
Par Dinah Zeldin
Congratulations to CIM for 125 years of excellence in reporting on the mining industry! This incredible achievement demonstrates your investment in the industry – an inspiration to all of us at Brandt. Here’s to a bright future and another 125 years of shared successes with CIM!
Each issue of CIM Magazine begins as just a few, lightly defined ideas: a growing trend, a focus on a jurisdiction or an emerging technology. Some ideas turn out to be not worth pursuing and others send us in directions we hadn’t initially anticipated. In the end, we fill the pages with stories, structure and focus that speak to the current moment. In the process, new discoveries are made and the prospects for future issues are set up.
With this commemorative 125 issue, we created a parallel task. Guided by contemporary topics, we dug into the archives to find material that would complement these present-day themes in mining. Some discoveries were right on the nose, such as the analog solution shared in the 1949 CIM Bulletin (pg. 39) to the enduring challenge of underground surveying. Now it is being addressed using drone technology, which writer Lynn Greiner details in “Underground aviation” (pg. 36).
With the column we unearthed from 1899 (pg. 28), the call to develop skilled and educated employees to support operations echoes today, though with a different tenor: The author simply wanted basic science instruction available. Seemingly educated in Great Britain, he managed a smelter in the B.C. interior, and recognized the enormous divide between his origins and his placement in the young province. However it may have benefitted, he recognized B.C. was not ready for an institution such as London’s Royal School of Mines, nor would a place of higher learning even be appropriate. “Indeed, it has been forcibly brought home to me that fine work is not wanted, or at least not appreciated in British Columbia—the rougher the better, usually.”
An excerpt from a 1981 paper on advances in shaft drilling (pg. 38) underscores how important funding experimental projects is. It is a good reminder for this country, which has not pri-
Editor-in-chief Ryan Bergen, rbergen@cim.org
oritized research and development and lags well behind its OECD peers in R&D funding.
Scattered throughout the pages are other items drawn from the archives of CIM. This issue—along with many other 125th anniversary initiatives—is also deeply informed by two outstanding works that came from CIM’s 1998 centennial. Pride and Vision, written by E. Tina Crossfield, is a comprehensive recounting of the Institute’s first 100 years. A Century of Achievement, by John Udd, traces the history of Canada’s mining industry. Both were put to the page through the vision of Peter Tarassoff, chair of CIM’s History Editorial Board, and the support of the CIM Centennial Corporation.
Leafing through the physical and online archives of the last 125 years yielded so many delights and surprises. There was no precise method to our search, but on that, the last word belongs to Robert Horn writing in a 2002 CIM Bulletin on the elusive formula for discovery (pg. 48): “Arizona porphyry copper deposits are scattered like confetti while Bingham Canyon sits in solitary splendour. For every orebody that was discovered in the mythical shadow of the head frame there are probably an equal number such as Cominco’s Red Dog or INCO’s Voisey’s Bay that until their discovery were situated in what was no doubt until then excellent moose or at least Caribou pasture.”
Ryan Bergen, Editor-in-chief editor@cim.org @Ryan_CIM_Mag
Advertising sales Dovetail Communications Inc.
Managing editor Michele Beacom, mbeacom@cim.org
Senior editor Ailbhe Goodbody, agoodbody@cim.org
Section editor Silvia Pikal, spikal@cim.org
Interim section editor Kelsey Rolfe, krolfe@cim.org
Editorial intern Julianna Martinek, jmartinek@cim.org
Contributors Lynn Greiner, Sara King-Abadi, Tijana Mitrovic, Brian Morgan, Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco, Matthew Parizot, Kelsey Rolfe, Dinah Zeldin
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
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ISSN 1718-4177. Publications Mail No. 09786. Postage paid at CPA Saint-Laurent, QC.
Dépôt légal: Bibliothèque nationale du Québec. The Institute, as a body, is not responsible for statements made or opinions advanced either in articles or in any discussion appearing in its publications
CIM is celebrating a banner year in 2023. The Dominion Charter of June 18, 1898, officially marked the birth of the Canadian Mining Institute, which subsequently became the Canadian Institute of Mining Metallurgy and Petroleum, or CIM for short, as we know it today.
I’ve been involved with CIM since the early 2000s, but with its 125th birthday, I wanted to learn more about some of its earlier history. I took a look at Pride and Vision, a book by author E. Tina Crossfield that chronicles and celebrates CIM’s first 100 years.
CIM had its roots in the first provincial mining associations with representation from both the east and the west. Mining in Canada had grown quickly and the author notes that it was the growth of both the railways and the need for minerals that were primary factors in the opening up of Canada. Coal mining had been taking place since the early 1700s on Cape Breton Island. Canada’s first iron ore foundry was opened at Quebec’s Les Forges du Saint-Maurice in 1729. The mineral wealth of the Canadian Shield was discovered in the 1860s and discovery of the Sudbury Basin’s copper and nickel deposits followed in the 1880s.
With this growth, members of the mining industry also realized quickly that industry-specific organizations were needed to better inform both them and the general public, as well as to provide an industry voice. One of those organizations was CIM.
During the Second World War, CIM played a significant role in advising a government committee on the sourcing of minerals identified as critical for the war effort. Post-war CIM saw the
growth of CIM technical divisions and committees, many of which morphed into the CIM Societies we know today.
Along the way, new branches and societies have been formed and new committees struck to recognize both membership needs and industry changes and innovations as they develop. Branches and affiliated student branches continue to have the longest reach across the country and have provided the first interaction with CIM for many new members.
CIM has navigated changes in membership demographics, internal structure and mining economic cycles. To do this, it has increasingly focused on its mandate and strategy. The 100-year history that Crossfield so eloquently chronicled in Pride and Vision finishes with 1997-1998 President Sandy Laird stating that CIM’s fundamental purpose is to provide its members with opportunities for both knowledge and fellowship. Those two guiding principles continue to be primary pillars in CIM’s strategic plans going forward.
I’d like to say thank you to Anne Marie Toutant and the presidents before her, to CIM’s hard-working central office team and to all of you, our members, for all of your efforts that have brought CIM to where it is today. We currently have more than 10,000 individual members and 124 corporate members. We have 30 branches nationwide, 11 societies covering a wide range of industry interests, 11 committees and 10 student chapters. We hold world-renowned events, publish internationally recognized standards, guidelines and leading practices and produce technical content that drives our industry forward.
Happy 125th birthday, CIM! We can look back at our storied history and our contributions to the mining industry with pride, and we will continually strive in our vision to serve our members as we go forward.
Mike Cinnamond CIM President
Hard-Line launched a new add-on feature, Bucket Assist, to its TeleOp systems. Bucket Assist gives TeleOp operators a visual depiction of the position of the boom and bucket in relation to the ground. The visual allows the operator to be closer to the machine without having to leave their TeleOp control station, which the company said would keep the machine operator at a safe distance and increase productivity. “Tactile feedback from the machine is crucial for any machine operator to judge the position and placement for optimum productivity,” said Phil Pelland, vice president of sales at Hard-Line, in a press release.
Dräger ’s latest gas detector for mining, the X-am 2800, measures up to four gases and warns the user about gasrelated hazards. It includes sensors for flammable gases and vapours and can detect the presence of oxygen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide. The X-am 2800 is paired for use with Dräger’s Gas Detection Connect, a cloud-based software. Data recorded from the device can be transferred to a smartphone via Bluetooth and uploaded to Gas Detection Connect using the Dräger X-dock test station. The detector can be worn on a clip and has large buttons, which make the device easy to use while wearing gloves. The display shows information such as gas readings, alarms and the time, and features a green status light to show when the device is ready to use. The X-am 2800 uses the new CatEx sensor, which is shock and poison resistant and can be configured for flammable vapours.
Brigade Electronics’ latest concept system, Brigade Fusion, uses sensor fusion technology to combine Brigade’s range of safety devices, including its 360-degree camera and radar obstacle detection, with M2M RTLS (Real Time Location System) technology. Brigade stated that the merging of these technologies can help to prevent high-risk events by providing the operator with prompt alerts. The system adds Earth Moving Equipment Safety Roundtable (EMESRT) levels eight and nine collision avoidance to its existing seven levels. “For operators, it provides a very robust layer of protection and additional peace of mind,” said Warren Di Marco, CEO of Brigade Electronics Canada, in a press release. “With Level 9, in the event the operator is unable to react in time, signals are sent to slow down or stop the machine. Importantly, the solution is not only modular but can be integrated with other customer hardware and data, so it can be designed to meet the customer’s specification.”
Compiled by Julianna Martinek
From “MIROC and developments in protective equipment for miners” by Peter Pullen, Chief Environmental Engineer for Rio Algom, CIM Bulletin, April 1979. The Mining Industry Research Organization of Canada was created in 1975. The initial work by the organization included work clothing, respiratory equipment and a “space-age” helmet.
The objective in the area of work clothing was to produce a rugged, water resistant, light-weight and temperature tolerant outfit with the underground environment in mind. A neat appearance also was considered important and a professional with experience in designing uniforms was engaged to produce patterns. The suits have been made in two weights, both using a Canadian nylon cotton fabric. The light-weight material is treated for water repellency, for use under conditions that are for the most part dry. In the heavier-weight suit, the same fabric has a back-up coating of TEFLON, for water resistance, while retaining some air porosity. The suits, designed as two-piece for size and temperature tolerance, require a minimum of accessory clothing. On trial at ten mining operations, a number of minor changes have been incorporated in the later model, which is now being re-tested in the field at member company sites.
The jacket has a loose yoke for ventilation, snap closures and convenient pockets. As may be seen, the shoulders have leather patches as protection when carrying materials. The right shoulder patch also has an attachment for the air hose for the supply of filtered air to the helmet. Openings are provided at the side of the jacket for the safety and lamp belt, so that at the back the jacket is inside the belt and at the front the jacket is placed over the belt.
The pants have a bib-front and attached suspenders. Some waist size adjustment is provided by gussets and snap fasteners at the sides. It is expected that the suit will be laundered about weekly and the wearable life is expected to compare well with the conventional alternatives now being used by miners. The weight of the coat is 1 lb, 12 oz, and the pants 1 lb, 8 oz, for a total of 3 lb, 4 oz. This may be compared with 3 lb, 9 oz for a conventional set of “oilers”. CIM
The latest federal budget shows the government seeking to push Canada closer to a net-zero economy, introducing new targeted tax credits and new investment to help drive the transition to renewable energy and promote the development of clean technologies, with the mining industry poised to reap the benefits.
In her speech to the House of Commons on March 28, Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland emphasized Canada’s importance to the global energy transition.
“We are going to make Canada a reliable supplier of clean energy to the world, and, from critical minerals to electric vehicles, we are going to ensure that Canadian workers mine, and process, and build, and sell the goods and the resources that our allies need,” she said, noting that the country has free trade deals with countries that represent two-thirds of the global economy.
Budget 2023 introduced a refundable tax credit of up to 30 per cent of the cost of investment in new machinery and equipment for extraction, processing and recycling of lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, copper and rare earth elements, which was lauded by both the Mining Association of Canada and the
Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada.
The new tax credit follows the introduction of the federal Critical Minerals Strategy in December and the March 24 launch of the Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund, which will allocate $1.5 billion for energy and transportation projects to be used in critical minerals operations.
Photinie Koutsavlis, MAC’s vicepresident of economic affairs and climate change, called the new tax credit a “silver bullet” and said it will help keep Canada as a competitive market for investment. While she said investments from the Critical Minerals Strategy, last year’s budget and the 2022 fall economic statement spurred a lot of mineral exploration, there was previously a gap in terms of incentives and support for the upstream part of the mineral value chain, such as the mining and mineral processing sectors.
“We’re very pleased with that tax credit. We think it helps level the playing field a little bit with the incentives and investments that the U.S. has made with the Inflation Reduction Act, and in ensuring that the investment attractiveness of the U.S. doesn’t pull potential investors [away from] Canada,” Koutsavlis said. “I think this tax incentive will definitely be attractive to proponents but also to investors.”
Budget 2023 also proposed an additional $500 million for the government’s Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) over the next 10 years towards the development of clean technologies. It will also direct $1.5 billion of the fund’s existing resources towards projects in clean technology, critical minerals and industrial transformation. The SIF, founded in 2018, has invested $6.9 billion in 107 projects across numerous sectors.
Clean energy and clean fuel were priorities for the federal government as well.
A refundable tax credit for critical minerals equipment among the features of this year’s federal budgetThe budget, delivered to the House of Commons in March, includes new targeted tax credits and new investment that will benefit the Canadian mining industry. Photo by Steven W. Dengler, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
The announcement of a 15 per cent refundable tax credit for investments in non-carbon-dioxide-emitting energy systems, including solar photovoltaic, wind and small modular nuclear reactors, could see significant benefits for remote operations opting to use alternatives to fossil fuels at their sites. Additional details were also announced on the implementation of the Clean Hydrogen Investment Tax Credit, first announced in the 2022 fall economic statement. The tax credit will cover between 15 and 40 per cent of eligible costs for clean hydrogen projects, which can be used to fuel large haul trucks.
The federal government also turned its eye towards the impact assessment process, which it said is not approving projects in an efficient manner.
“Building Canada’s clean economy will require significant and sustained private sector investment in clean electricity, critical minerals and other major projects,” the budget read. “Ensuring the timely completion of these projects is essential— it should not take 12 years to open a critical minerals mine.”
The budget promised to release a plan to improve the efficiency of the process, which includes clarifying timelines, reducing inefficiencies and improving the engagement process. The promise builds on several federal investments over the past year to streamline impact assessments, including $1.3 billion over six years to the Impact Assessment Agency and other federal agencies.
Additionally, $11.4 million will be provided over three years to Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada to engage with Indigenous communities and update the federal guidelines on Indigenous consultation, in support of the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. As well, $19.4 million over five years will be invested in increasing the participation of Indigenous Peoples and northerners in environmental and regulatory assessments of major projects, and $1.6 million over two years will be put towards increasing federal participation in these assessments and consultation with Indigenous communities.
Jeff Killeen, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s director of policy and programs, said these announcements will be beneficial for building positive relationships between the mining industry and Indigenous communities.
“Prospective lands are an essential part of making new discoveries and building up our critical mineral supply chain,” Killeen said. “Seeing that new funding for supports around Indigenous participation and also [being] able to make smart decisions around conservation is a positive. Because we know that that’s one part of our industry ecosystem that can help us improve, make decisions more quickly and see more mines built in Canada.” CIM
The company’s acquisition of the Canadian Malartic mine and Wasamac project is part of its focus on the Abitibi gold belt
Agnico Eagle Mines has taken full control of the Canadian Malartic gold mine in Quebec’s Abitibi region—the country’s largest openpit mine—after its deal with Yamana Gold closed on March 31.
The deal also gave Agnico control of the Wasamac project in the Abitibi gold belt and several other exploration-stage projects in Ontario and Manitoba.
Shaft Sinking
Mass Excavation
Production Mining
Raiseboring
Raise Mining
Underground Construction
Mechanical Excavation
Engineering & Technical Services
Specialty Services
- THE REDPATH WAY SINCE 1962.
DEPENDABLE, PROFESSIONAL
“As demand for critical metals and minerals increases, pressure is on the mining sector to discover new deposits, develop existing projects quickly, engage with First Nations and local communities so they understand the projects, and work with governments to streamline the permitting process for more timely approvals to meet this growing demand,” said author Mona Forster, who has worked in the mining and mineral exploration sector for over 30 years, in a press release.
“Amongst all these priorities, junior resource executives often overlook or aren’t sure how to respond to new reporting requirements about how their company is undertaking climate-related risk management practices.”
Agnico Eagle and Pan American Silver announced a joint US$4.8 billion acquisition of Yamana in November, beating out Gold Fields’ initial offer. The deal saw Pan American purchase Yamana’s issued and outstanding shares and add four mines to its profile, and Agnico walk away with Yamana’s Canadian assets.
Agnico said in a press release its acquisition of Canadian Malartic and Wasamac was part of its strategy to “solidif[y] its presence” in the Abitibi gold belt of Ontario and Quebec, “a region of low political risk and high geological potential.”
The company forecasted its production from its operations in the gold belt, which also includes its LaRonde Complex, Goldex mine and Detour Lake mine, to be between 1.9 million and 2.1 million ounces of gold per year through to 2025.
In its 2022 annual results, released in February, the company said it planned to focus on “optimizing its expanded strategic positions” in the Abitibi in 2023 by improving mill throughput at Canadian Malartic and LaRonde. The improvements are expected to create excess mill capacity of 40,000 tonnes per day at Canadian Malartic by 2028 and 2,000 tonnes per day at LaRonde Zone 5 by the second quarter of this year.
“By maximizing the mill throughput in the region, the company believes there is potential to increase future gold production at lower capital costs and a reduced environmental footprint,” the company said in its results. Agnico said
it could add roughly 20,000 ounces of extra production in 2024 and scale up to an additional 500,000 ounces of gold per year by 2030.
It said its Wasamac, Macassa nearsurface deposits, Upper Beaver and other Kirkland Lake satellite deposits could be potential future sources for the extra mill capacity.
– Kelsey RolfeCanada Climate Law Initiative report offers guidance for junior mining executives unsure of how to disclose climate risks, greenhouse gas emissions
A new guide by the Canada Climate Law Initiative (CCLI) advises executives of publicly traded junior mining companies to report to their investors the steps they are taking to reduce climate changerelated risks, and it warned that not doing so may result in reduced access to capital and legal action.
Junior miners, which represent almost 60 per cent of companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange Venture Exchange (TSXV), tend to have small or insignificant carbon footprints, the report said. But there is a growing demand from investors and regulators for all companies to disclose their emissions and plans to decarbonize.
Changes to securities law and accounting standards will require more thorough climate risk reporting. The Canadian Securities Administrators, the umbrella organization for provincial and territorial securities regulators, called climate change a “mainstream business issue” and requires all public companies to disclose their material climate risks and how they’re managing them. In addition, the proposed National Instrument 51-107, expected to come into force this year, will require more transparency around, and measurability of, companies’ net-zero targets.
The International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation’s new International Sustainability Standards Board has also released two new accounting standards for disclosing material climaterelated matters that will come into force as of Jan. 1, 2024.
The report also pointed to the federal government’s green transition finance taxonomy, released in March. The taxonomy lays out requirements for companies that want financing for projects that advance Canada’s net-zero goals. To qualify, companies will have to set net-zero targets and transition plans, as well as provide effective climate risk disclosure. “The taxonomy should open up new financing for venture issuers that can demonstrate effective climate governance,” the report said.
The CCLI’s guide offers resources to assist companies traded on the TSXV to meet their regulatory and marketing requirements and meet their fiduciary duties to its investors and other stakeholders.
It said juniors must disclose any physical, transition and technological risks to
their business, such as extreme weather events, shifting policy and legal landscapes, reputation risks and employing new technologies.
“In meeting their duty to act in the best interests of the company, directors and officers must be diligent in identifying and managing climate-related
risks and opportunities that could affect the short-, medium-, and long-term viability of their companies,” said Janis Sarra, professor of law at the University of British Columbia and principal coinvestigator at CCLI, in the press release.
The report noted that some disclosure guidance and protocols, such as the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the federal Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, can be too onerous for TSXVlisted companies. But it recommended using the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s GHG calculator for exploration stage companies and its framework for responsible exploration. The TSXV also has a primer for environmental and social disclosures that companies can refer to.
It said juniors should be part of the conversation on securities laws and accounting standards given their business model is different than major companies.
The guide is available for download on the Canada Climate Law Initiative website (ccli.ubc.ca) under the knowledge hub. – Julianna Martinek
North America’s only major source of spodumene concentrate has reopened its doors, as Sayona Québec announced its successful restart of the North American Lithium (NAL) operation on March 30.
Currently, the mine is targeting 226,000 tonnes of spodumene concentrate production for the next four years, with the first shipment expected in July 2023. At present, Sayona has two major buyers in place for the mine’s product, with LG Chem agreeing to an offtake agreement for 200,000 tonnes over four years and automaker giant Tesla purchasing 125,000 tonnes over three years.
To date, Sayona Québec has invested $98 million in NAL acquisition costs and $55 million in restart expenses to bring the Abitibi, Quebec-based operation to successful production. The mine has a lengthy history of changing hands. Original owner Canada Lithium struggled to achieve commercial production, and after a merger with Sirocco Mining and a name change to RB Energy, shut down operations in 2014 and ultimately filed for bankruptcy. The mine began operation again in 2017, but a drop in lithium prices forced it back into care and maintenance in 2019. NAL, which was a subsidiary of the Chinese firm Contemporary Amperex Tech-
nology Co. Ltd (CATL), filed for bankruptcy protection the same year.
Sayona Québec—a 75-25 joint venture between Australian miner Sayona Mining and American company Piedmont Lithium— purchased NAL in August 2021. The string of previous owners had already invested significant capital into the operation, including the construction of the open pit, crushing plant, mill, flotation plant and more. Patrick Brindle, Piedmont’s executive vice-president and chief operations officer, estimated that around $400 million had already been invested in the operation when Sayona took over. That allowed the company to focus on process improvements during the 18 months it took to bring the operation out of care and maintenance.
“This was a long plan in the making, and we’re very happy that it’s been successfully realized,” he said.
Much of the capital Sayona invested was to optimize the performance of the mill. “[It] really built on the knowledge that prior operations and the management team had built up over time in terms of what it would take to de-bottleneck the operations, what it would take to improve mechanical availability, throughput, recovery and grade,” Brindle said. “There really was no secret sauce, it was really just taking the recommendations
of management and putting them together into a comprehensive brownfield upgrade program.”
The operation is still in its ramp-up phase with more work to be done, including the addition of an extra crushed ore storage dump, the completion of a lift of the tailings dam and upgrading the substation.
Sayona released a definitive feasibility study on April 14 that describes the NAL mine and includes the company’s Authier lithium project, also in the Abitibi region. According to the study, NAL has an aftertax net present value of approximately $1.4 billion with an eight per cent discount rate and a 20-year life of mine, with the potential to extend this with a 50,000metre drilling program scheduled for this year. Its proven and probable reserves total at 235,500 tonnes of contained lithium oxide from 21.7 million tonnes grading at 1.08 per cent. Sayona is also planning to release a pre-feasibility study on the potential completion and restart of NAL’s lithium carbonate plant sometime in the first half of this year.
Electric vehicles (EVs) are the main driver of lithium demand due to its role as a key metal in the creation of batteries. According to the consulting firm McKinsey, 60 per cent of today’s lithium goes towards battery applications, which could grow to reach 95 per cent by 2030. But
The Abitibi-based mine is North America’s only major source of spodumene concentrateCourtesy of Sayona Mining The North American Lithium operation is still in its ramp-up phase with more work to be done.
according to both McKinsey and the International Energy Agency (IEA), demand for the metal is expected to outstrip supply by the beginning of the next decade if no new projects come online. The IEA projected a three- to seven-fold demand increase by 2030, depending on how aggressively countries decarbonize their economies, while McKinsey estimated global supply as of 2030 could be 55 per cent lower than what is needed.
Despite the projected demand, however, the near-term economics tells a different story. After peaking at nearly 600,500 Chinese yuan (approximately $117,000) per tonne in November 2022, the spot price has fallen sharply in 2023 after CATL offered some automakers steep discounts for its battery-grade lithium carbonate. As reported by Reuters , analysts from Goldman Sachs expect supply to grow by around 34 per cent annually through to 2025, outpacing an annual demand growth rate of 25 per cent.
There are other spodumene projects in the works in Quebec, including Nemaska Lithium’s Whabouchi mine and
Patriot Battery Metals’ Corvette property. There is also a push for alternative sources of lithium, such as E3 Lithium’s plan to extract it from brines contained in Alberta’s Leduc aquifer. For Brindle, however, there is an importance in being the first major supplier in North America to try proving that it is possible to establish a battery metals market on this continent.
“I think the narrative in Western economies is that we need to create
Leaders of northern Ontario First Nations voiced concerns about the province’s amendments to the Mining Act that would speed up mine development timelines
Four Ontario First Nations called out the provincial government for failing to adequately consult with them on mining
ecosystems for battery manufacturing that exist outside of China,” he said. “I think the performance at North American Lithium is really important and will be closely observed by the market and by governments in the coming months going into next year because we want to be able to demonstrate that North America, overall, and Quebec, in particular, can be a successful producer of lithium units.” CIM
activity near their communities as the province seeks to amend the Mining Act to fast-track the time it takes to get mines built.
Leaders of the Neskantaga, Grassy Narrows, Muskrat Dam and Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First Nations also called out the steep increase in staking on their territories over the past few years during a March 29 press conference at Queen’s Park.
“Right now, you see the government fast-tracking their legislative agenda to access our traditional homelands, and that’s just unacceptable,” said Neskantaga
Lundin Mining appointed Maria Olivia Recart to its board of directors. Recart was the Dean of Universidad Santo Tomás from 2019 to 2023, and before that was vice president, corporate affairs at BHP from 2010 to 2018. She brings with her a range of experience on environmental and social topics, including community engagement, government relations, sustainable supply chains and social values.
Sandfire Resources America named Lincoln Greenidge as its new chief executive officer. Greenidge joined the company in 2022 as its CFO and has worked for global companies including HudBay Minerals, Iamgold and Nortel Networks.
Suncor Energy appointed Daniel Romasko to its board of directors. Romasko has over 30 years of experience in the energy industry, including most recently as president and chief executive officer of Enlighten Innovations.
Northern Graphite Corporation named Kirsty Liddicoat chief operating officer. Liddicoat is a mine geologist and brings with her more than 18 years of global mining experience. Northern also appointed Dave Marsh as its chief technical officer. Marsh joined Northern Graphite in 2022 and has 40 years of combined experience managing the process engineering divisions of international consulting and operating companies.
Copper Mountain Mining appointed Patrick Merrin as president and chief executive officer, effective April 24. Merrin brings with him 10 years of senior executive operational and technical experience, including most recently as senior vice president of Canadian operations at Newcrest Mining.
Pure Gold Mining named Jonathan Singh chief administrative officer on March 31. Singh is the company’s sole officer and signing authority. Pure Gold also announced that all members of the board of directors have resigned. West Red Lake Gold Mines Ltd. (WRLG) is acquiring Pure Gold for $6.5 million, the companies announced on April 17. The Pure Gold mine near Red Lake, Ontario remains in a state of care and maintenance during Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) proceedings.
Chief Wayne Moonias. “We’ve been very consistent with our position—until such time as we provide free, prior and informed consent to plans on our homelands, they will not be.”
Neskantaga is one of several First Nations that will be impacted by mineral development in the Ring of Fire region in the James Bay lowlands of northern Ontario, and one of the access roads to the region is set to run through the Nation’s territory.
Provincial Minister of Mines George Pirie announced the government had agreed with Webequie and Marten Falls First Nations on the terms of reference for an environmental assessment for the last of the three proposed roads into the hotly contested Ring of Fire region at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s annual convention in March. Moonias said at the time Neskantaga had not consented to those terms. The First Nation also sued the province over inadequate consultation in November 2021.
Christopher Moonias, Neskantaga’s Chief-elect, said the government has not sent any representatives to the community in past years. “Consultation happens in the community in the language we understand,” he said. “That’s our understanding of consultation and accommodation.”
The Ontario government unveiled its proposed changes to the provincial mining act in early March through its Building More Mines Act. The act proposes to make it easier for companies to obtain permits to recover
minerals from mine waste and tailings; give companies the option to not make financial assurance payments on closure plans upfront and instead pay them in phases, tied to the project’s construction schedule; and allow more flexibility in the techniques used to rehabilitate closed mines.
The proposed amendments also include allowing miners to file closure plans that do not immediately meet all of the Mining Act’s requirements as long as the plan is updated later, and reducing the number of circumstances under which a company must give notice of a material change to a project.
The mines ministry said the changes would still meet Ontario’s environmental protection standards and would not compromise the province’s duty to consult with First Nations.
“It shouldn’t take 15 years to open a mine. This process is too time-consuming and costly, leading to project delays and lost opportunities for Ontario’s mineral exploration and mining sector,” Pirie said in a release at the time. “We need to get building.”
The proposed changes come as Ontario seeks to ramp up the development of critical minerals projects to meet the needs of the booming electric vehicle market and the future low-carbon economy.
Muskrat Dam Chief Alvin Fiddler and Grassy Narrows Chief Rudy Turtle both expressed concern at the March 29 press conference about the amount of staking taking place near or on their land. According to a graph shown at the press confer-
ence, there are currently roughly 200,000 hectares of staked mining claims on Grassy Narrows’ land, well up from less than 50,000 in 2019.
“Over the years, it’s skyrocketed,” Turtle said, adding that the community had been “very clear” that it did not want any mining development on its land, and had successfully blockaded logging activities on its territory for 20 years.
Fiddler said his community had learned about Platinex Inc.’s expansion of its Muskrat Dam property in January through social media, rather than engagement from the government or company.
He called on the government to honour its obligations under Treaty #9, which covers First Nations in the James Bay and Hudson Bay areas, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
“We shouldn’t have to beg for meetings with officials. They should reach out on our terms and [come to] our territory,” Fiddler said. “[Premier Doug Ford] knows what his obligations are.”
– Kelsey Rolfe and Julianna MartinekTwo mega copper projects expected to play significant roles in the global supply of copper in the coming decades reached significant production milestones in March
Rio Tinto began underground production at its giant Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert on March 13. On March 31, Teck Resources announced its Quebrada Blanca Phase 2 (QB2) project in northern Chile’s Tarapacá region produced its first bulk copper concentrate.
Rio Tinto’s US$7 billion underground expansion project, which is expected to be the fourth-largest copper mine in the world by 2030, got the green light in January 2022 after the company settled a dispute with the Mongolian government over the mine’s economic benefits to the country and a US$2.4 billion debt owed by the government to the company’s then-
subsidiary, Turquoise Hill Resources. Mongolia has a 34 per cent ownership stake in the mine, while Rio Tinto controls the remaining 66 per cent.
Rio Tinto chief executive Jakob Stausholm said in a press release on March 13 that Oyu Tolgoi was “critical” for global copper production and economic development in Mongolia.
Oyu Tolgoi has been operating as an open-pit mine since 2011. The combined surface and underground operations are expected to produce around 500,000 tonnes of copper per year on average between 2028 to 2036, which Rio Tinto said would be enough to produce about six million electric vehicles annually.
“The copper produced in this truly world-class, high-technology mine will help deliver the electrification needed for a net-zero future and grow Rio Tinto’s copper business,” Stausholm said.
The underground operation, which begins 1.3 kilometres below the surface of the desert, is being developed by block caving. Since the early 2022 agreement, the company has blasted 30 drawbells.
Canada Nickel Company appointed David Smith as Chairman. Smith is a current member of the company’s board and was most recently the EVP finance and CFO at Agnico Eagle Mines.
Asante Gold Corporation appointed David Anthony and Edward Nana Yaw Koranteng to its board of directors. Anthony is currently the chief executive officer of Asante and has more than 40 years of experience in mine project development and operation at the senior management and executive levels. Koranteng is the chief executive officer of Minerals Income Investment Fund and brings with him over 23 years of experience as a lawyer and corporate and investment banker.
Peter Mercer joined the American Pacific Mining Corp. executive leadership team as senior vice president, advanced projects, focusing on the advancement of the Palmer VMS project in Alaska. Mercer brings with him extensive experience in mineral exploration, permitting, construction and mine development, including most recently as vice president at Rambler Metals and Mining.
Probe Gold appointed Renaud Adams to its board of directors. Adams has over 30 years of global mining experience in senior executive positions and currently serves as president and chief executive officer of Iamgold Corporation.
Mike Wainwright, chief operating officer at Trafigura, will retire next year. Wainwright has served as the company’s COO and board member since 2008. At press time, Trafigura has not announced a replacement.
Lundin Gold appointed Christopher Kololian as its new chief financial officer, effective July 1. Kololian brings with him over 16 years of experience in the metals and mining investment banking sector, including most recently as managing director and co-head of metals and mining for Europe, Middle East and Africa with RBC Capital Markets.
QB2, meanwhile, is ramping up to full production over the course of 2023. QB2 is expected to produce between 285,000 and 315,000 tonnes of copper annually between 2024 and 2026. The company has pegged the project’s initial mine life at 27 years based on roughly 18 per cent of its 2022 reserves and resource tonnage, and said it has “significant potential for future growth” in a March 31 press release.
QB2 is one of the world’s largest undeveloped copper resources, and Teck has forecast that it has the potential to double production at QB2 in the future, which it said would put the mine among the top 10 copper producers in the world.
Teck owns an indirect 60 per cent interest in the owner of QB2, Compañía Minera Teck Quebrada Blanca SA (QBSA), while Sumitomo Metal Mining and Sumitomo Corporation have a collective indirect 30 per cent interest in QBSA. The Chilean state-owned company ENAMI has the remaining 10 per cent non-funding interest in QBSA.
“First copper concentrate production at QB2 is an important milestone as we advance our commissioning and ramp up plans towards full production this year,” said Teck CEO Jonathan Price in the release.
Mining at the original Quebrada Blanca open-pit mine ceased in the fourth quarter
of 2018, with mining equipment and employees redeployed to develop QB2. Copper demand has skyrocketed, given its outsized importance in the transition to a low-carbon economy, but according to a November report from S&P Global, the supply gap could be too large to fill.
Copper demand is expected to grow from 25 million tonnes in 2022 to reach 50 million tonnes by 2035, the report said. S&P said that demand could outpace the expected supply by up to 9.9 million tonnes, or roughly 20 per cent of the copper needed to meet energy transition goals.
The report laid out two scenarios; one that would see mine capacity utilization and recycling rates continually increase through to 2035, and one in which they remained constant at 84.1 per cent, the global average capacity utilization for the preceding decade. In the first scenario, global refined copper production could reach 47.3 million tonnes by 2035, or a 3.2 per cent supply gap, and an eventual surplus of 1.3 million tonnes by 2045. In the latter scenario, the report predicts the 9.9 million tonne supply gap, and no prospect of a supply surplus until 2050.
The report said one of the key challenges to ramping up copper supply is the length of time required to bring a new mine online.
Despite rapidly growing demand, a late March report from BMO Capital Markets noted many miners are opting to return cash to shareholders instead of focusing on expansion. In much of the past 20 years, the report said, expansion capital spending in the mining industry has typically exceeded 20 per cent of companies’ earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). But in the past five years, that metric has slipped to lower than 15 per cent, and shareholder returns have been prioritized even as miners have seen their free cash increase.
The report said the lack of investment was “storing up issues for later in the decade,” when balance sheets look to be tighter. BMO said it expects miners to look towards “buying rather than building any growth” as high capex costs, shareholder resistance and environmental challenges increase the difficulty of building new projects.
BMO boosted its price forecast for most commodities given these challenges, including boosting its copper forecast by 10 per cent.
– Julianna Martinek and Kelsey RolfeBritish Columbia and Quebec focus on critical minerals while Ontario invests in the Ring of Fire
Mining and mineral exploration featured prominently in several 2023 provincial budgets, with governments earmarking funds to support exploration, particularly for critical minerals, as well as improving permitting and other processes and increasing their attractiveness as mining jurisdictions.
The budget put a clear focus on developing northern Ontario and particularly the Ring of Fire region near James Bay, which hosts Ring of Fire Metals’ Eagle’s Nest nickel project. The budget included a nearly $1-billion investment in infra-
structure to advance the development of critical minerals in the region by building all-season roads and establishing broadband connectivity.
Ontario Minister of Mines George Pirie applauded the budget’s focus on developing infrastructure, transportation and mining in northern Ontario.
“Right off the bat, they talked about mining; they talked about critical minerals; they talked about the Ring of Fire. So, a real high priority is being given to the North,” Pirie told the Timmins Daily Press on March 24. “This ties right back into getting the minerals out of the ground in northern Ontario to secure the supply chain.”
The government also allocated an additional $6 million over two years to the Ontario Junior Exploration Program, which finances junior mining companies’ mineral exploration and development. This brings the province’s total investment in junior exploration companies to $35 million since 2021.
Ontario Mining Association president Chris Hodgson said that the budget was “better than they thought” in committing government resources to mining.
Conspec Controls would like to congratulate the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum for 125 years of shaping the mining world.
“We see every government agency and ministry starting to focus on how can we be competitive and how can we get more manufacturing and help with the global challenge of climate change,” Hodgson said. “[The budget] talked so much about the importance of mining for the economic future of Ontario. That was probably the one thing that we were pleased to see because that sets the direction for the whole government.”
The budget, delivered on February 28, came after what provincial Minister of Finance Katrine Conroy said was a “record-breaking” year for mineral exploration.
“Funding for a new critical minerals strategy in this year’s budget will continue to support the sector. B.C. is ready to deliver the essential materials needed to help transition away from fossil fuels and grow a clean economy,” Conroy said.
The province’s $6 million commitment to develop its critical minerals strategy will be spread over three years, facilitating more critical mineral exploration and potential processing and manufacturing. The funding will also support and engage with Indigenous communities and other stakeholders, the budget document said.
The government also outlined $77 million over three years to make natural
resource permitting more efficient. Kendra Johnston, president and CEO of the Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia, commended the investment in the permitting process. “[We’re] really happy to see that the government understands the importance of permitting for the industry and for other industries across B.C., and that they’re looking to expedite the timelines without reducing any of the regulations,” she said.
The funding will go towards modernizing current permitting processes and services, focusing on approaches that encourage co-management and decisionmaking with Indigenous communities. In June 2022, the province reached a historic agreement with the Tahltan Central Government, the administrative governing body of the Tahltan Nation, that makes the environmental assessment and development of Skeena Resources’ Eskay Creek gold-silver project contingent on the consent of the Tahltan Nation. The agreement was the first of its kind to be negotiated under B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.
To meet the province’s goal of “[harnessing] the value of Quebec’s subsurface minerals,” the provincial government announced $10 million in spending over two years to develop its critical and strategic
minerals sector. The money will also go towards renewing the mandate of the Société d’investissement dans la diversification de l’exploration (SIDEX), which includes investing in exploration companies operating in Quebec, until March 31, 2033. To date, SIDEX has invested over $105 million in mineral exploration companies and projects in the province, including O3 Mining, Kenorland Minerals and Osisko Mining.
In its 2023 budget, the Saskatchewan government has committed $4 million to expand the Targeted Mineral Exploration Incentive to increase funding limits and support exploration drilling for all hardrock minerals.
The government has also increased the Saskatchewan Mineral Exploration Tax Credit from 10 per cent to 30 per cent, making it the highest mineral exploration tax credit in Canada. “Saskatchewan is open for business,” Energy and Resources Minister Jim Reiter said in a March 22 press release. “Critical minerals are vital for our modern way of life and in short supply around the world. Saskatchewan is fortunate to have occurrences of 23 of the 31 critical minerals on the Canadian critical mineral list.”
The government renewed its Manitoba Mineral Development Fund partnership with the Manitoba Chamber of Commerce and has committed $10 million over the next three years to help leverage private sector investment in mining. The fund, managed by the Manitoba Chamber of Commerce, has invested nearly $8 million towards mining and development projects across the province and has helped create 73 long-term jobs and form 72 community and Indigenous partnerships since 2020. The 2023 budget also made the Mineral Exploration Tax Credit permanent; the credit was initially set to expire on Dec. 31, 2023.
The budget also outlined a 50 per cent increase in staffing and department capacity for the Department of Mineral Resources, which the Manitoba government says will support increased mining interest by improving permit processing timelines.
The budget allocated $18.7 million for the research, design and development of
the provincial Department of Energy’s energy policy. The budget also outlines department objectives around optimizing the energy regulatory system, modernizing legislation and regulations and improving the efficiency of application approval processes. The budget said the funding for those priorities was meant to increase competitiveness and create jobs.
The government is projecting that mineral exploration in the province will reach $238.6 million in 2023 due to increased gold exploration and interest in critical minerals and rare earth elements. The 2023 budget included a $1.7 million commitment to its Mineral Incentive Program, which funds mineral exploration in the province through the Junior Exploration Assistance Program (JEA) and grants and training for prospectors. The JEA program will receive $1.3 million of that funding to support junior mining companies focused on critical mineral exploration.
– Tijana Mitrovic
Generation Mining hopes Marathon will be Canada’s next greenfield critical minerals mine
Generation Mining Limited released an updated feasibility study on March 31 for its Marathon palladium-copper project in northwestern Ontario, which it hopes will become the next greenfield critical minerals mine in Canada. The mine will focus on producing copper concentrate, containing copper, palladium, platinum, gold and silver.
The study outlines the operation of an open-pit mine and process plant expecting to produce a total of 2.1 million ounces of palladium and 517 million pounds of copper over a mine life of 12.5 years.
Results from the study, prepared by G Mining Services, showed an after-tax net present value of $1.16 billion with a
discount rate of six per cent, assuming prices of US$1,800 per ounce for palladium and US$3.70 per pound for copper, and an internal rate of return of 25.8 per cent.
The study anticipates initial capital costs of $1.11 billion with a payback period of 2.3 years, a 25 per cent increase since the last feasibility study, which was completed in March 2021. In a webcast on April 3, executive chairman Kerry Knoll said the new estimate reflects inflation, quotes and estimates on equipment purchases and the work to be done on the site.
“This updated feasibility study underscores just how robust the Marathon project is, even in the current inflationary environment,” said Jamie Levy, president and CEO of Generation Mining, in a March 31 press release. “This, combined with strong demand for critical minerals, makes the rationale for the project becoming Canada’s next critical minerals mine more compelling than ever before.”
With palladium in demand for autocatalysts, which convert toxic emissions
in car exhaust into less-harmful chemicals, and copper as a key component in electric vehicles, Levy said the project is a “low-cost producer of critical metals that Canada and the rest of the world desperately need.”
According to the study, the Marathon project is expected to be one of the lowest CO2 equivalent intensity mines in the world. The company commissioned Skarn Associates to benchmark the carbon footprint per copper equivalent.
Skarn Associates estimated that carbon emissions worldwide average 4.65 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per tonne of copper equivalent produced, with the Marathon project less than one third of that average. The comparison was made with 13 producing copper mines across the country. On a worldwide basis, the Marathon project would be in the bottom four per cent.
Results from the feasibility study show the project has a total of 127,662 tonnes of proven and probable reserves, with expected average annual payable metals of 166,000 ounces of palladium, 41 million
pounds of copper, 38,000 ounces of platinum, 12,000 ounces of gold and 248,000 of ounces of silver.
“Our team has been working hard to develop the Marathon project and has successfully optimized and improved confidence in the designs of the process plant, the open pits and the necessary infrastructure for the project,” said Drew Anwyll, Generation Mining’s chief operating officer, in the March 31 press release.
Generation Mining stated that since its 2021 feasibility study, the company has performed additional metallurgical test programs to optimize the flowsheet and plant design and improve confidence in metallurgical recoveries. It also performed geotechnical investigations in areas of key infrastructure location and confirmed the locations chosen in the construction design, as well as diamond drilling an additional 18,995 metres within the Marathon deposit.
In the April 3 webcast, the company announced it is currently waiting on three
provincial permits before it can begin construction, which are for the mine closure plan, tree harvesting and species at risk. Levy said the company hopes to start early works construction by the summer or fourth quarter of 2023. The company estimates the project will create over 800 jobs during construction, and over 400 jobs during operations.
Seven Indigenous groups indicated they were interested in participating in consultation processes with Generation Mining’s project, which is located within the territory of the Robinson Superior Treaty area, and the company signed a community benefits agreement with the Biigtigong Nishnaabeg First Nation.
The Marathon project involves the construction, operation, decommissioning and remediation of three open-pit mines to produce copper concentrates. In the webcast, the company stated 60 per cent of the revenue will come from palladium, 30 per cent from copper, and the remaining balance from platinum, gold and silver. – Julianna Martinek
For more information:
"On the establishment of science classes, &c." was originally published in The Journal of the Canadian Mining Institute, 1899 The writer, Augustus H. Holdich, held a position at the Hall Mining and Smelter Company, which began operations in Nelson, B.C., in 1896.
It is right to state at the commencement of these few remarks, that the ideas therein contained are not intended to apply to large and well populated cities, where far superior arrangements can readily be made, but rather to the small and scattered towns that help to make up this vast Dominion. The inestimable value of, amounting really to a necessity for, Technical Education will hardly be disputed, and the question now seems to be, by what means can it be best supplied. In the larger cities of the Dominion this offers no difficulty, as the various well known universities can amply supply all needs; but in the less populated districts— British Columbia perhaps especially, no city is yet powerful enough to support a properly constituted and equipped School of Mines, or College for Technical Education, nor could students be moving about from one town to another except at a prohibitive loss of time and money. But the fact remains that this special education ought to be afforded, so that all whose tastes or occupation incline them to take advantage of it should have no difficulty in so doing at the minimum of inconvenience and expense.
If, as the writer ventures to think, these statements will not be disputed, it may not be time wasted if some of it is spent in considering the matter seriously, always of course making use of experience that has been gained in other countries. In England for instance, science classes are held in every town of any pretension, and pretty well all branches of science are taught besides
Technical Education in the chief industries of the district, e.g., dyeing, tanning, carpentery, weaving, and many other allied subjects. In many of these schools, well fitted laboratories are to be found, where the students can carry out practically what they have learnt in theory, and also make experiments in their own particular branch under the guidance of the teacher; and nothing is so productive of permanent knowledge as carefully and thoughtfully performed experiment. In some of the larger institutions there are in addition, fully equipped workshops for making engines, electrical apparatus, and such like machinery, a thorough knowledge of which will ensure a decent living to any ordinarily clever man. It is not my purpose here to refer to the still larger educational establishments such as the Royal School of Mines (London), Owen’s College (Manchester) or the Liverpool University, all of which are far beyond our means, if not our wants, (and indeed it has been forcibly brought home to me that fine work is not wanted, or at least not appreciated in British Columbia—the rougher the better, usually), but merely to see what can be done with the limited means at our disposal, and it seems to me that the establishment of Science classes in all towns where there appears to be a desire for them will prove a comparatively easy task.
The beginning must of course be on a very limited scale; there is no need to build a huge structure till the enterprise is able to afford it; but most towns can find a large room furnished with all that is necessary in which lectures could be
given on various scientific subjects, and possibly some practical instruction as well. A “rough outline” so to speak of a chemical laboratory can be easily and cheaply fitted up, a vast array of uniformly sized bottles with complicated glass apparatus, and any amount of paint and varnish while unquestionably pleasing to the ordinary eye, being totally unnecessary. It is not the bottles and apparatus that do the work, but the man who knows how to use them. The difficulty is that not much experimenting can be done at night—in the 3 hours usually assigned to such work—it is not at all easy to see just what you are doing, and what has actually happened as the result of your experiment, by artificial light. But lectures can easily be given at that time, and possibly a few hours of daylight can be spared during the week as well, for experimenting only. The study of minerals indeed, which is a most important branch, can only he carried on properly by daylight—unless at least some form of electric light can be introduced that is in all respects equal to daylight. However, these and many other points which are liable to crop up at any moment, must be left to be dealt with after the suggested classes are formed and in working order—the first thing is to have such classes organized for the benefit of those who are unable to attend the larger universities and colleges, in the more out of the way towns in this Dominion. The question naturally arises, “who is going to pay for this teaching”? And it is a question that must be answered, as it is the lot of
very few of us to be out here exclusively for the benefit of our health.
How then can the expenses be met?
Well, let us hope that our provincial governments will be able to see their way to assist; and let the pupils themselves pay a certain fee, more of course where laboratory practice is included, and let there be regular examinations (perhaps annually or even twice yearly) upon the results of which the teacher shall receive some grant from Government. The fees to be paid by the pupil probably might have to be varied in different localities, cost of living, &c., being an important factor in the calculation, but the Government grant should be at least equal to such fees, dependent on the condition that the pupil passes a satisfactory examination. The grant might very reasonably be graded, so much per head first class; and so much less for second class; then the teacher would have a very strong incentive to teach the subject thoroughly.
It is very much easier for one man to travel (if he must) 10 or 50 miles once a week so as to teach his particular subject at different centres, than it is for pupils to travel that distance; and it is quite possible that in every town some one man can be found who can teach at least one special subject and do it thoroughly; the same being true of more than one man and more than one subject. In any case, the matter appears to me to be well worth attention, and there are some grounds for hoping that the British Columbia Legislature will take the scheme into consideration at an early date.
Perhaps some members of the Institute will offer their own opinion and suggestions as to the feasibility of starting up even on a small scale some such classes as I have attempted to outline.
In close connection with this subject is the urgent need of some kind of association of analytical chemists and assayers, to prevent the too commonly
utterly incapable man from misleading those who innocently come to him for advice. It has fallen to me more than once in British Columbia to find a man professing to do assays (and even analytical work) who was ignorant of the first principles—and often had quite unsuitable balances. While the assay for gold and silver is not very difficult (but it wants to be performed correctly), yet copper is not quite so easily estimated and requires decidedly more skill and experience, and I have met assayers out here who candidly acknowledged that they could not assay a sample for copper. Can we not join together and insist on a man proving himself capable, before allowing him to practice? or would it be “interfering with the liberty of the subject”? Some action ought to be taken, and it is my sincere hope that these rather random notes may be considered and discussed and that the hoped for good results will follow. CIM
Resourceful Paths’ principal consultant is championing both sustainability and diversity in the mining industry
By Sara King-Abadi Laurie Reemeyer Principal Consultant Resourceful PathsBEng Honours
Mineral Processing, University of Queensland
MBA Honours
Engineering and Business
Sustainability Certificate, University of California, Berkeley
What is your proudest career highlight?
When a problem with water quality arose at a mine site, we developed a solution, then I effectively communicated our plan to the Aboriginal community and was able to allay people’s concerns. I’m particularly proud of this moment because communicating technical issues can be challenging and requires thoughtfulness, and this was a success.
Name one of your most recent accomplishments.
My presentation at last year's annual CIM Convention, “Making mining more welcoming for young professionals: Reflections from my career to date,” which was my coming out in the mining industry. It was really quite liberating.
Laurie Reemeyer is ready to share his story. The principal consultant for Resourceful Paths, a Vancouver-based consultancy firm that focuses on helping mining companies reduce their impact on the environment, is now speaking openly about his experiences as a member of the 2SLGBTQ+ community in the industry.
For Reemeyer, the public’s growing interest in both sustainability and social issues is not a coincidence. “In general terms, people who care about the environment tend to also care about other things like environmental justice, social justice, those types of principles,” Reemeyer said.
When it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, these values can strengthen the mining industry, he said.
“When you get into aspects of sustainability and ESG [environmental, social and governance] you realize part of the bigger picture, which is responsible business practices that are also attuned to the needs of stakeholders that are aware of the need for diversity—diversity of thought, diversity of people—[help us] make good choices that are not just centred around the traditional ways of thinking,” he said.
Historically, Reemeyer said, there has been a “colonial view” in the mining industry, leading to the exploitation of resources to the detriment of communities: “Certainly we saw in places like Papua New Guinea, companies would come in and exploit resources with limited regard for impacts. Things did not go well in that part of the world, for example on Bougainville Island, where the impacts of mining led to civil war and a lot of harm, environmentally and socially.”
Looking to reduce the impacts of mining has been an ongoing theme in Reemeyer’s nearly 30-year career.
With the encouragement of Professor Alban Lynch at the University of Queensland in 1990, Reemeyer did vocational training at BHP’s Broken Hill mine in Australia’s outback, where he worked under metallurgist Fran Burgess in sampling and laboratory techniques
and analysis of the performance of the grinding circuit of one of the concentrators.
Their research was well-received and that exposure to the industry left Reemeyer wanting to learn more. “That was really the trigger for me to choose mineral processing as my selected stream of engineering,” he said.
At the same time, Reemeyer was beginning to realize there were key environmental problems associated with mining. The Ok Tedi environmental disaster in Papua New Guinea in 1984— where 90 million tons of mine waste was annually discharged into the Ok Tedi river for more than 10 years, destroying downstream villages, agriculture and fisheries—was in the foreground of his education.
“We saw images during school and that continued through the ’90s,” Reemeyer recalled. “I found an interest in overcoming processing and engineering challenges, while also recognizing that the environmental and social impacts of mining needed to be better addressed.”
Following graduation from the University of Queensland, Reemeyer started working at Mount Isa Mines in Queensland in 1994, where he performed a wide range of roles, including in smelter emissions and waste management.
“Mount Isa was also an operation with some legacy problems like pollution emitted from the copper smelter,” he recalled. “One of my early jobs was to determine how much sulfur dioxide and heavy metals were going up in the stack ... and it was a lot. Back then, the company was very secretive about discussing these emissions, which made me feel uncomfortable. Later, gov-
ernments required stronger emissions reporting, and at Mount Isa a significant portion of copper smelter gases are now treated in an acid plant.”
That experience gave Reemeyer more insight into the impacts of mining pollution and the potential to optimize processes.
At 30 years old, in 2003, Reemeyer became the plant manager at Zinifex’s Century mine in northwest Queensland. It was a steep learning curve but left him with the skills to weather the high-pressure industry that mining can be.
“It can be very up and down,” he explained. “During times when prices are low, and when times are tough, it can be difficult, you can see friends and colleagues lose their jobs and operations be constrained and you don’t have a lot of resources to get through.”
While sustainability was always at the back of Reemeyer’s mind, the real turning point for him came in the mid-2000s while at the Century mine. Part of his job was being responsible for the tailings storage facility. The experience familiarized him with tailings management and quality control while working on a progressive expansion of the facility, as well as balancing water management with Aboriginal communities who relied on some of the water discharged by the mine operations.
However, Reemeyer wanted to have an even bigger impact when it came to helping mining companies reduce their impact on the environment, and in 2008, he left Zinifex to pursue an
MBA with a Certificate in Engineering and Business Sustainability at UC Berkeley in the United States.
“I got very engaged in climate change because of the great research being done there,” he said. “And just connecting the dots between the global scale of climate change, the transition that was coming in terms of things like electric vehicles, and the importance of having the ingredients for green technology. The mining industry is needed to supply these metals.”
After completing his MBA, in 2011 he took a role with the consulting firm AMEC in Vancouver before eventually deciding to strike out on his own to help mining companies find paths for more sustainable extraction and use of natural resources, founding the aptly named Resourceful Paths in 2016. His firm provides a variety of consulting services to assist companies looking to reduce energy and water use, manage climate change and maximize resource recovery.
Deep down, Reemeyer always knew he would carve his own path: “Partly because I like the independence. I like the ability to say what I think needs to be said, and not to be constrained by corporate policies or by bosses that are potentially divisive or scared.”
As the mining industry reacts and adapts to climate change, the industry is changing in other ways too. As a gay man who began working in mining in the 1990s, Reemeyer said the culture shift has been huge in the last few decades.
“For most of my career ... I was almost completely hidden, in terms of my sexuality,” he said.
Reemeyer described seeing pictures of topless women where he worked in the ’90s: “There were hardly any women who worked in those areas, but for the ones that did, they were subjected to these images as well. As a gay man, I was always uncomfortable about that ... and there were plenty of times when sexuality was talked about in derogatory ways.”
It wasn’t just inappropriate images that made him feel unwelcome. After a weekend trip to Mardi Gras in Sydney in the early 2000s, Reemeyer returned to a torrent of gossip, innuendo and harassment in the workplace about his sexual orientation. Some of his coworkers were supportive, but the easiest way for Reemeyer to avoid workplace discrimination was “just to deny.”
A turning point for him came in 2018 when he noticed more and more support for mining company 2SLGBTQ+ employees on platforms like LinkedIn during Pride month. Then, on a visit to one of Reemeyer’s clients, Newcrest’s Red Chris mine in British Columbia, he noticed a huge Pride flag painted on the kitchen wall.
“[It’s] something I would never have imagined would happen in the mine site, certainly in the early part of my career,” he said.
Reemeyer felt it was time for him to speak up. At last year’s annual CIM Convention, in May 2022, Reemeyer presented, “Making mining more welcoming for young professionals: Reflections from my career to date,” and described it as a “coming out in the mining industry.”
“Doing that presentation really opened doors for me about publicly speaking about sexuality and this journey that I’m on,” he said.
While the feedback he received was positive, he said the industry still has work to do to create a welcoming and safe space for women, non-binary folks and racial minorities.
“We really do have a diversity issue in mining,” he said. “Today, women still make up less than 20 per cent of the mining industry workforce in North America, and it is even less in some other countries. As a gay man in mining, I’ve generally found it easier to work with women and feel attuned to their needs. I feel this has allowed me to create a safe and non-threatening space for women to explore and overcome some of the biases and harassment that they still face. This can also translate to supporting diversity, equity and inclusion issues for a range of underrepresented groups.”
Reemeyer is eager to be part of the change, which he feels will positively benefit the industry.
“We need smart people who care to tackle the many challenges facing the industry, and diverse workforces can help there,” he said. “Shifting diversity in the mining industry is a work in progress, and it’s something that I’m really excited about.”
Today, Reemeyer proudly declares Resourceful Paths as a majority-owned 2SLGBTQ+ business and is looking forward to continuing to share his experiences out in the open.
“There are not many people that are out in mining—there are a handful that I know of,” he said. “It’s something that I want to be talking about a lot more publicly. I want our community to feel welcome and seen as contributing to the success of our industry.” CIM
Mining is a varied, multi-faceted industry and the people who work in the sector are equally diverse. Modern Miner will run through 2023 and showcase mining professionals from a range of backgrounds and highlight the ways they are leading, innovating and pushing the industry forward. If you know somebody who should be profiled, email editor@cim.org.
In March this year, Hecla Mining received the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration’s 2022 Robert E. Murray Innovation Award for a new mining method it developed to control the release of seismic energy at its Lucky Friday underground silver, lead and zinc mine in the Coeur d’Alene mining district in Idaho, United States.
Called the Underhand Closed Bench (UCB) method, it has given the 81-year-old mine the upper hand in managing mininginduced seismicity, which has burdened the operation for more than 40 years. Not only has this improved worker safety at Lucky Friday, it has also considerably grown the mine’s production.
That solution began to reveal itself in October 2019 when conventional blasting at Lucky Friday didn't quite work as expected.
Lucky Friday’s challenging mining-induced seismicity has been studied by researchers around the world for years. While the mining front, which has steep, narrow veins, is deep, reaching close to 7,500 feet beneath the surface, depth alone does not explain its troublesome seismicity. According to Gabriel Walton, associate professor of geology and geological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, Lucky Friday has higher stress concentration levels around its mine workings than those found in highly seismically active mines in South Africa that are twice as deep. The faults around Lucky Friday are major culprits.
“The compressive tectonic stresses in the region have upturned the lithology, which makes the horizontal stresses greater than the vertical stress,” said Mathieu Armatys, a rock mechanics engineer at Hecla, who worked on the geomechanical analysis and design for UCB.
Armatys described the conventional cut-and-fill mining method used at Lucky Friday prior to implementing UCB as analogous to loading a spring. “Imagine a fault is cutting through the rock mass, and as we mine towards it, mining-induced stress grows on that structure, similar to compressing a spring,” he said. “At some point, the fault reaches a critical state, and the stored energy is released as a seismic event, unloading the spring. With cut-and-fill, the hope is that it happens while blasting, but if the spring gets hung up, it can release at a random time, presenting a ground hazard.”
Hecla’s efforts to improve its management of seismic energy goes back to the 1970s with the work of engineers such as Wilson Blake, Fred Brackebush and Mark Board, the latter of whom went on to become vice-president of technology and innovation at Hecla in 2014.
In 1985, the company developed its first new mining method, called the Lucky Friday Underhand Longwall (LFUL), an underhand cut-and-fill method developed in collaboration with the U.S. Bureau of Mines. By the early 2000s, Hecla had a seismically quiet period, as mining in the new Gold Hunter deposit progressed employing the LFUL mining method. But in 2010, the company began building the mine’s fourth shaft—going down to nearly 10,000 feet beneath the surface. As the project advanced, the
seismic activity at the mine began increasing exponentially. With each new event, Chris Neville, the mine’s operations manager, became increasingly concerned and determined to find a solution.
“We mitigated it mostly through scheduling,” said Neville. “We would not work areas we were blasting, but that reduced production in some active stoping areas by up to 50 per cent. We knew that wasn’t sustainable.”
Even without seismic-caused delays, the fastest the face at Lucky Friday could be advanced using cut-and-fill was 16 feet
per day, per stope, with two eight-foot-round cuts at the end of each shift, making mining the operation’s bottleneck. While scheduling helped reduce worker risk, as the seismicity intensified, so did the damage. One mining-induced 2.15 moment magnitude seismic event that hit Lucky Friday in 2017, for example, created a five-to-nine-foot floor heave across more than 80 feet in length.
“We recognized when we were sinking the number four shaft of the mine that we needed to evaluate our mining method,” said Wes Johnson, who was promoted from Lucky Friday’s technical services manager to Hecla’s chief planning engineer in January 2023. In 2017, the company signed a deal with Atlas Copco to develop a mechanical rock-cutting Remote Vein Miner (RVM), which would eliminate the need for blasting. Hecla hoped this solution would help reduce seismicity, remove workers from risk underground and improve productivity.
On that October 2019 day, in preparation for receiving the RVM, Neville and his team set out to precondition a 90-foot-tall pillar at a corner of a stope that had been causing seismic problems with rockbursts and floor heaves. Using a tight blasthole pattern, the team blasted the pillar. When they went down to inspect the stope, they saw the blast had pulverized part of the hard rock stope floor, creating a large muckpile. “Several of us looked at it and thought ‘that’s interesting,’” said Neville. “We asked, ‘what can we do with this?’”
For Neville, Board and the others there, it was a lightbulb moment. Was it possible, they wondered, to rethink their approach to mining and release the seismic energy beneath the surface by blasting the stope’s hard rock floor instead of using a conventional face advance?
Board suggested they could try adding more blastholes at the next cut to further study the mechanism.
“I know other managers who would say ‘no, we can’t do that,’ but I’m fortunate to work in an environment where I was able to say, ‘let’s do it,’” said Neville. “I didn’t have anybody above me tell me no. Hecla allowed me the freedom to experiment and get to where we are.”
In April 2020, when making the next cut, Neville and his team increased the number of blastholes. “It had some success, but it was more of a failure,” said Neville. “It had enough success, though, and we knew how to fix it.”
Over the next year, “We took one stope and did a bunch of testing, as the other stopes were still being mined conventionally,” said Neville. “We failed and we failed fast. There were times we tried three different blasts with three different drill patterns just to see what would work.”
With each failure, Neville’s team moved closer to achieving their objective. “The goal was to see if we could induce seismic events when we want them to occur and turn this into a viable mining method, meaning we’re going to destress the floor of the stope and then mine it back through with minimal drilland-blast,” said Armatys.
They tested drill patterns, blasthole depth and the powder factor (the ratio of how much explosive is used compared to the amount of rock broken), among other things. All the while, Armatys was conducting seismic analysis and numerical modelling to confirm and calibrate the results of their tests.
The team also had to improve the accuracy of their vein projection. “We invested in a pre-production diamond drilling program to improve the geologic understanding beneath the mining
front so that we were confident in the vein position and weren’t going to miss it,” said Johnson. “One of the big risks is that if you drill the production blast without a good understanding of the vein position, the ore grade is very low because you’ve missed the vein.”
Between 2020 and 2022, the team continued to modify the new mining method to achieve consistent results as they implemented it across the stopes. This included integrating the surveying, geology, mine planning and design teams with a single software platform. “Because once we figured out how to do the mining,” said Johnson, “the engineering had to speed up to keep up.”
UCB advances the mining face much faster than Lucky Friday’s previous method by first releasing the seismic stress beneath the hard rock stope floor.
“With this new mining method, we’re blasting a large length of the stope all at once,” said Johnson.
Using three-inch, 24-foot deep blastholes along 250 feet of the stope floor and 25,000 pounds of explosives, the UCB method blasts 10,000 short tons (9,072 metric tonnes) of rock beneath the floor at once. UCB releases over 90 per cent of the total seismic energy around the stope within 12 hours of the blast, equivalent to a work shift. Once this time has passed, the mining crew enters the stope and begins mucking out the swell, then backfilling it before proceeding down to the next two 12-foot-
cuts. After that, the crew reaches the hard rock floor and the process is repeated.
While the goal of the blast is to release the seismic energy, UCB also produces 100 times more fragmented ore than the conventional method. This is the main reason for Lucky Friday’s dramatic production increase using the method.
In 2022, with UCB, Lucky Friday set a new safety record with an all injury frequency rate of 1.6 and no lost time injuries, while mining 321,145 short tons (291,338 metric tonnes) compared to 160,749 short tons (145,829 metric tonnes) in 2020. This year, Lucky Friday’s production is expected to increase by another 17 per cent.
“This concept has been 40-plus years in the making,” said Neville. “There were people in the 1970s and the 1980s testing ideas to mitigate stress [at Lucky Friday] that led to what we’re doing today. Throughout the years, we just built on that knowledge. Innovation, more often than not, is an accumulation of knowledge that leads you to something that is a step change. But you never get to that step change if you’re not always thinking about continuous improvement.” CIM
By Lynn Greiner
Miners are likely accustomed to seeing drones flying above their facilities, keeping an eye on transportation systems and tailings ponds, or flitting about in exploration mode, hunting for new deposits to develop. The flying machines, however, are not limited to the open skies and continue to prove themselves in the tight confines and darkness of underground operations.
Whether it is surveying areas that are unsafe or inaccessible to humans or helping to figure out whether the truck that accidentally drove over the brow of a stope is recoverable, a drone can do what a miner can’t—or shouldn’t—faster and more safely.
But not every drone is appropriate for the task.
Why? In a statement to CIM Magazine, drone manufacturer Autel Robotics, which keeps its own drones safely outdoors, explained: “We do not suggest our drone be used in indoor flying or underground flying. The closed environments are indeterminate, the signal stability of the remote control and the aircraft cannot be guaranteed. In addition, the underground mine area is narrow, and the request for obstacle avoidance performance is higher. This kind of fieldwork should be managed by a specific drone designed and dedicated to mining.”
There are drones that are designed for precisely that purpose. They can navigate underground in seemingly impossible spaces,
looking where (literally) nobody can go, and using sensors that “see” much more than is possible with a human eye.
Use cases range from surveying and mapping to evaluating the consequences of a rockfall or assisting in rescue operations.
But, noted Matt MacKinnon, president and founder of Unmanned Aerial Services (UAS), a Sudbury, Ontario-based provider of drone services to mining companies, there is no allin-one solution. His company works with multiple manufacturers, so it can recommend solutions that have the appropriate capabilities and that are the right size for the job. These systems can range from drones measuring five-foot-three diagonally to a compact 19-inch unit.
And sometimes those drones, which cost well upwards of US$80,000, give their all in service to the mine. MacKinnon recalled being called in to a mine with a failing stope. The geology department and ground control engineers were concerned that it was failing towards their main ventilation raise, potentially shutting down the mine forever. Chunks the size of a small car were breaking off the stope, so it was clear that any exploration flight would be the last one for any drone venturing down.
When MacKinnon told mine management the price of the service, which included replacement of the drone, they didn’t blink; otherwise, they potentially stood to lose hundreds of millions of dollars of production. So off went the drone on what was to be a suicide mission.
MacKinnon recalled, “We got the mine map, because we streamed back a live model [from the drone] as well, fortunately, so we were able to reconstruct the stope off the live model, and show it was actually breaking to the left and not to the right. They ultimately allowed the stope to continue selfmining itself in the end and extracted all the ore. Had they been guessing, they probably would have started dumping paste and backfill in there, just because of the way the geology was trending.”
Raffi Jabrayan, vice-president, commercial sales and business development at Exyn Technologies, joined the company in 2019. He first encountered Exyn drones during his tenure at Canadian miner Dundee Precious Metals, and felt that their use could transform mining.
There, he used them for mapping stopes. Instead of forcing surveyors using cavity monitoring systems to spend hours taking measurements, they could capture the data in just a few minutes with a drone, increasing their productivity as well as keeping the miners safer. Thanks to light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors and 4K cameras, they could produce 3D images of the stope that even showed any underbreaks or overbreaks.
“The other upside was accuracy,” he observed. “We no longer had a stationary piece of equipment going in, whether it was from the bottom of the stope or the top of the stope. We had a drone, which would go in, fly the entirety of the stope, come back out in a few minutes and give us a much more accurate picture of what was actually happening inside the stope.”
The drones, which are still in operation today at Dundee Precious Metals, are fully autonomous—their programming and hardware allows them to fly themselves, once presented with a mission. The upside of that, he noted, was the operator doesn’t have to remain in line of sight; the drones can fly into awkward spots, capture their data, then return to the operator, who then downloads the information. The data includes exact geo-references, video, 3D rendering and more, depending on the sensors carried by the drone and the needs of its mission, so each flight’s data can be added to a map of the entire mine.
“There’s literally nothing required for the drone to operate,” he said. “We don’t require any previous infrastructure, Wi-Fi, 5G or connectivity of any kind. The onboard computer continues to capture all the data—regardless of whether it’s connected to the operator. It has its own collision avoidance, its own autonomy and its own real-time mapping capability along with a 4K camera. We’ve mapped huge voids over 200 metres, which takes about eight to nine minutes, as well as smaller areas that can take one to two minutes. And as the drone comes back within range of the operator, it automatically uploads the data it has collected directly onto the handheld tablet, lands itself exactly where it originally took off from and it shuts itself off.”
And since Exyn is a software company, no specific brand or type of drone is required.
SafeSight, as its name suggests, aims to reimagine how mining can be done more safely. President Mike Campigotto noted, however, that drones aren’t the be-all and end-all; SafeSight builds payloads that can be carried by anything from a drone, conventional vehicles or even the Boston Dynamics robotic dog, Spot, depending on the situation.
“The industry has been, or has become, enamoured with drone technology,” he observed. “But really the drone itself is just a carrier pigeon. The real value is its payload, which is motion LiDAR scanning technology. That’s really what we’re deploying underground to digitally transform both the way things are done and how safely they’re done.”
He has seen his drones used to investigate rockfalls and to carry sensors measuring air quality, especially after a blast, so miners know when it is safe to get to work. They have flown through fires to gauge when it is safe for emergency responders to enter an area, and flown to determine whether a dump truck that is nose down after it drove off a stope could be safely retrieved (the driver managed to escape safely, he added).
Safety is also top-of-mind for Alexandre Meldem, managing director, Americas at Flyability. The Swiss company’s mission is to send robots instead of humans to gather data in dangerous and hard-to-reach industrial places, including mines, and its drones are designed to fly in indoor spaces.
“Use cases can be divided in two categories for drones such as the Elios 3: visual inspection and mapping,” he explained. “It can be used to inspect and monitor the condition of ore passes, shafts, stopes and raises to ensure that operations can safely and efficiently be accomplished. In cases of hang-ups, it can also be used to visually inspect the mass to better understand how it should be approached. Visual inspection is also performed on a variety of equipment, such as the condition of the lining, the wear on various components and even blockages on processing machinery.
“On the mapping side, it can navigate in tight and cluttered environments where other drones cannot, yet it has enough lift capacity to carry a LiDAR sensor within these spaces,” he said. “It maps various parts of the mine in real time, and allows operators to get a highly accurate digital twin of various parts of their mine.”
Yet despite this multitude of use cases, there is still some resistance to drone technology.
“I see the biggest obstacle, which I think has been prevalent in mining for a number of years, as resistance to change and a resistance to implementing new technology,” Jabrayan said. “Because it is such an established industry, people have become used to and comfortable with doing certain things a certain way for an awfully long time.”
Meldem agreed. “Change in processes is never easy, especially for industries that have been built over centuries,” he said. “In any industry, there is reliance on the ‘old way’ and reluctance to embrace new technologies as they are, by nature, not yet commonplace. The ‘old way’ is usually both our greatest challenge to overcome as well as our biggest competitor.”
Another huge challenge, Campigotto pointed out, is the variety of use cases a given technology can handle.
“For us, we’ve always measured our solution based on the percentage of use cases in which the technology can be effectively applied,” he said. “So if you create a piece of technology, and it can only be used in 50 per cent of the mapping scenarios, that’s way less value than if you can create a technology in which your client can describe 15 use cases, and in 12 of them, the technology fits the bill and gathers the data that they need. Keeping that high rate of use cases is, I think, a challenge.” CIM
In this excerpt from a CIM Bulletin technical paper from 1981, engineers R.P. Carone and D.A. Whitley highlight how the Cold War, and the United States’ massive military budget, helped advance shaft drilling expertise.
To most people, the drilling of mine shafts may seem to be a new or at least recent technology. However, as early as the 1920s, German and Dutch miners were drilling 24-foot-diameter shafts for coal mines. What led miners to resort to drilling were ground conditions that still plague conventional shaft sinkers today: soft, water-bearing formations. The major drawback to these early attempts was a low penetration rate due to poor bit cleaning. This, however, was not the end of early shaft drilling activity. From 1936 to 1950, a number of mine shafts were drilled by the calyx or coring method. This method employs a bit with a large bore down the center. As it drills, it cuts a core. When 5 to 10 feet have been drilled, the core is removed. The disadvantages of this method were the time and work involved in breaking the core free, and it was inadequate in soft water-bearing ground.
Today’s shaft drilling technology has most of its roots at the United States Nuclear Test Grounds in Mercury, Nevada. It was here that the magic combination of a real need and virtually unlimited funds provided great strides in the science of shaft drilling. Because of the ban on atmospheric testing of nuclear devices, the now defunct Atomic Energy Commission made the decision to set the devices off at the bottom of large-diameter shafts that had been backfilled. When the program was initiated, the shafts were drilled using techniques most familiar to the contractors hired for the job; that is, oilfield technology. It soon became apparent that new systems were going to have to be designed to make shaft drilling feasible. From these first truly serious and costly attempts, shaft drilling has developed into an experienced and qualified technology.
The most prominent advantage of shaft drilling over conventional shaft sinking is speed. In the New Mexico mineral belt, a 20-foot-diameter shaft 3,500 feet deep can be expected to take four years to complete. Drilling methods could cut this time down to one year. This one-year period includes lining operations. The reason for such drastic differences in time is that drilling incorporates penetration and muck removal into one continuous operation.
Safety is also significantly increased, as the workers do not enter the shaft until it is completely lined. This also adds to the speed of operations, because adverse down-hole conditions, such as heat, water and humidity, do not affect the workers’ performance.
On an economic basis, shaft drilling is competitive with conventional shaft sinking, looking only at the bottom-line costs to construct a particular shaft under certain ground conditions. However, if the time value of money is considered, the scale, in these cases, leans heavily toward drilling methods. It is generally accepted that a dollar today is better than a dollar tomorrow. By employing drilling methods, such a shaft can become productive in one-quarter the time it would take to sink it conventionally. This greatly improves the cash flow picture of the proposed shaft construction.
Another advantage to shaft drilling is control of ground waters and unstable formations. These problems can seriously hinder conventional shaft sinkers and, in some cases, the costly procedures of ground freezing must be employed. When drilling, these problems are easily handled by manipulation of the drilling fluid. Such conditions are countered by weighting up the fluid. This increases the hydrostatic head, which exerts an opposing pressure on the aquifer or zone of instability and prevents inflow of water and/or debris. CIM
The Sullivan lead, zinc and silver mine in Kimberley, B.C., operated from 1909 to 2001. Surveyor
A.T. Richardson provided this clever, if highly combustible, solution to one of the underground challenges at the mine to readers of the CIM Bulletin in 1949.
The unusual height of stope backs in the Sullivan mine of the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada, Limited, necessitates the use of hydrogen filled balloons as an aid to surveying.
Seamless, pure gum rubber meteorological balloons of three-inch diameter are inflated with hydrogen to a diameter of twelve to fifteen inches.
One, two, or three balloons, depending on the stope height, are tied to a light, strong grade of fishing line. This line is graduated with numbered tags every five feet. The line is attached so that the distance from the top of the balloon to the first graduation tag is five feet exactly. The other end of the line is wound onto a reel.
The transit is set up on a known station with a known back sight. At selected points in the stope, the assistant runs the line off the reel until the balloons touch the back of the stope. He then reads the length of the line at the height of his cap lamp. The surveyor sights on the lamp and notes the horizontal and vertical angle. The distance from the instrument to the lamp is measured with a metallic tape and noted. A stope spotlight is directed at the balloons to make sure they are touching the back. Where the back is sloping, care must be taken that the balloons do not slide up the stope back and give a false reading.
By subtracting the assistant height and by adding line readings, spot heights of footwall and back are obtained for each point, from which contours can be drawn in the usual manner. By this method, reasonably accurate results are obtained in stopes up to one hundred feet high. Balloons should not be touched by open lights or live cigarette butts, as a serious burn may result. CIM
This drawing of the Sullivan mine was included in safety engineer
J.M. Wolverton's 1937 account of the safety improvements at the mine, where in the previous two years there had been no fatalities.
At the Mining Innovation, Rehabilitation and Applied Research Corporation (MIRARCO) in Sudbury, Ontario, Nadia Mykytczuk’s vision is starting to come to life.
MIRARCO, an independent research arm of Laurentian University, is in the midst of building the Centre for Mine Waste Biotechnology, which will allow for large-scale testing of biomining and bioremediation processes. This subset of biotechnology uses bacteria to break down mine waste and extract minerals from it. The centre, when it is built, will accept large samples of mine waste materials from operations to develop processing and treatment solutions.
Mykytczuk, president and chief executive officer of MIRARCO and the executive director of the Goodman School of Mines at Laurentian University, told CIM Magazine that she sees the centre as having the potential to address the biggest challenge facing the uptake of biotechnology in mining: moving proven processes up the technology readiness scale.
“A lot of what our research and industry partners have shown works. But it’s only been demonstrated at a small scale on the lab bench, or in small studies. We need to prove them at scale, de-risk them and show that they will be robust,” Mykytczuk said. “My whole vision for the [centre] is to allow us to test promising technologies, optimize and scale them up, and help
commercialize them and get them out the door faster. At a time when critical minerals and demand for new mines is going to accelerate, we want to get these tools into the hands of industry to maximize the recovery from waste and reduce environmental liabilities.”
MIRARCO’s biotechnology research is just one of a handful of innovative research projects under way in Ontario. Across the province, university researchers and mining consortiums are advancing initiatives aimed at preparing the industry for the critical minerals boom and the transition to net-zero emissions— from unlocking previously inaccessible nickel deposits through new processing techniques to making battery electric vehicle (BEV) powertrains mine-ready the moment they arrive on site.
The industry has started to recognize the potential of bioleaching and bioremediation. MIRARCO has ongoing projects with major and junior mining companies. In March, it received $875,000 from Vale and $750,000 from the Ontario government (through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation) over five years to create an industrial research chair program in biomining and bioremediation, which will give Mykytczuk additional funds to work towards commercializing the biotech processes.
MIRARCO also partnered with BacTech Environmental Corp. last year to run a bioleaching pilot campaign in Sudbury. Mykytczuk was named a strategic advisor to the company in 2021. The pilot program will test out BacTech’s pyrrhotite bioleaching initiative, which Ross Orr, the company’s president and CEO, said he expects can recover nickel-cobalt, sulfur and iron from pyrrhotite tailings in the Sudbury Basin, and that the value of the contained nickel alone could be upwards of US$22 billion.
Orr said the company’s bioleaching technology allows for pyrrhotite to be processed, breaking it down into four distinct products: sulfur, nickel/cobalt, iron and an oxidized residue.
BacTech is also planning to build and operate a 50 tonneper-day bioleaching facility in Ecuador to treat material containing high concentrations of both gold and arsenic, from small local mines in the Tenguel-Ponce Enriquez region.
In the 1970s, Canadian nickel miner INCO Ltd. (now part of Vale) started a research project to extract nickel from its mine tailings, which the company thought could contain up to one per cent nickel. The project was eventually shelved and forgotten, until about 10 years ago when a group of researchers at U of T began talking with people at Vale.
“We found it very interesting and thought maybe it was timely research, because we need more resources,” recalled Barati, a professor in the University of Toronto’s Materials Science and Engineering department and the Gerald R. Heffernan Chair in Materials Processing. Barati and his fellow researchers applied for and received a research grant to dig into extracting value from the tailings stream through an environmentally friendly processing technique. But partway through the process, the team had a thought: if their work could apply to tailings, why not apply it to the rich massive nickel sulfide deposits in Sudbury?
The bacteria both MIRARCO and BacTech use tend to be indigenous to the waste pile or ecosystem. “The old adage for environmental microbiology is everything is everywhere but it’s the environment that selects, which still holds true,” Mykytczuk said. “Each process we develop—and each host mineral we want to bioleach—requires a different type of bacteria. For example, iron and sulfur oxidizing bacteria are most effective for breaking down sulfide minerals, which release elements into solution that can be recovered. Different communities of bacteria can be applied, whether you are looking to recover elements from waste or help stabilized waste materials in the remediation of mine sites/waste materials.”
BacTech is able to nudge the native bacteria into speeding up their natural processes with added nutrients like potassium and nitrogen, Orr said.
BacTech thinks it could sell the sulfur to the sulfuric acid industry, iron to steelmakers and battery-makers, and has multiple options for selling its nickel. “We’re not saying we’re making battery metals, we’re just trying to clean up a problem and there’s a use for the stuff we’re going to be scavenging,” he said.
The timing is right for more reasons than one, Mykytczuk said. Bioleaching applications have existed for more than 40 years, though within mining it is still considered a niche or risky technology. But in the past decades, tools like genomics have helped microbiologists start to “understand the microbial black box” and find the right bugs for each application. “That’s really changed the reliability and robustness of bioleaching and I think that is fundamentally changing how the industry views these technologies as a viable method to address this challenge,” she said.
At the University of Toronto, Mansoor Barati is working on a new method of processing nickel that could unlock massive amounts of new nickel ore. Like MIRARCO’s work, this project also traces its origins back to the idea of mining value from waste.
After four years of optimization, Barati said the process “worked beautifully” on those deposits. The standard smelting process for sulfide concentrates includes an oxidation process that creates sulfur dioxide, which miners must capture at very high cost, and which operates at a temperature of 1,400 degrees Celsius. In contrast, the U of T researchers’ method reacts metallic iron with the material, which captures the sulfur into a solid iron-sulfide, resulting in the precipitation of nickel as ferro-nickel. The process does not release any sulfur and happens at a much lower temperature of below 1,000 degrees Celsius.
The method held plenty of advantages for miners—including the ability to do away with smelting, sulfur emissions and slag. But Barati said his team could not get industry to pick it up. “We started looking to extend the research to a larger scale, for future adaptation at the industrial scale. But smelters are massive, billion-dollar facilities and it’s hard to justify replacing it with new technology, so the traction was not really there for existing facilities,” he said.
In principle, Barati said the method could apply to any nickel sulfide mineral, so the team considered other untapped nickel resources that could benefit from this method. Ultramafic lowgrade nickel ores stood out. Barati said there are billions of tonnes of the deposits around the world, mostly in the U.S., Canada (particularly Manitoba) and Australia, with the estimated
“With the pace and demand we’re going to see for batteries, electrification and critical minerals, we can’t afford…to not accelerate these things as fast as possible.”
– Nadia Mykytczuk, MIRARCOCourtesy of BacTech Environmental
nickel content in the tens of millions of tonnes. “That could basically supply the world’s nickel for decades,” he said.
But these deposits have long presented challenges to miners, Barati said. They typically host grades of between 0.2 per cent and 0.8 per cent nickel, in comparison to the roughly one to two per cent nickel in massive nickel sulfides. That difference might not seem like a lot, but it means there is much more gangue material in ultramafic deposits.
The nature and mineralogy of the gangue also creates several problems. Unlike massive sulfide ores, ultramafic ores are not as responsive to flotation because the gangue material is also partly floatable. Smelting the concentrate is also “extremely challenging and energy intensive” because it requires pushing the temperature to the extreme to melt the refractory gangue, like magnesium silicate, that are present in the ore. Barati said the method his team developed seems promising for ultramafic deposits, as it will not require smelting.
Barati’s research just received funding from Vale as part of its $1.6 million partnership with the University of Toronto to develop sustainable mining solutions for the critical minerals sector, announced in early March. He said as part of the partnership, his team is looking to take the method to the pilot scale.
Sudbury-based technology company Symboticware is taking asset tracking to the low Earth orbit (LEO). In March, the company
announced a partnership with Swarm, a SpaceX subsidiary, to create an asset performance management platform that will be accessible from anywhere around the world. Swarm provides low-cost and low-bandwidth connectivity through its constellation of very small satellites in low orbit.
Symboticware CEO Ash Agarwal said the partnership will give miners globally the ability to keep track of their fleets, improve their performance and employ predictive maintenance, even without access to reliable internet or cell service. According to Symboticware, less than 10 per cent of the Earth’s surface is covered by cellular networks, leaving mining and other industrial sites—particularly those that operate in ultra-remote regions of the world—in the dark.
“Ninety per cent [of mines] don’t have reasonable bandwidth,” he said. “And when it comes to assets across a mine, if you want to track machines and optimize performance, the only way to do that is to connect with machines. If you’re not measuring, you’re not managing. But most mines don’t even know where their machines are.”
Agarwal said the new platform, based on Symboticware’s 4-Sight.ai asset management solution, was designed to be lower-bandwidth, as the satellite network is currently not as strong as a cellular connection. The company developed a compression algorithm so that when equipment data is transmitted from a truck or load-haul-dump to the platform, to eventually be viewed by someone in an office or in the control room, the
“package” it is sent in is significantly smaller than what could be transmitted by cell service—essentially like a zip file.
The company also had to contend with the reality of the existing LEO constellation, Agarwal said. Currently, Swarm has approximately 160 commercially available satellites orbiting the Earth. That means that as of this writing, a satellite will pass over wherever you are at intervals. For miners, data transfer between their equipment and Symboticware’s platform can only occur when a satellite is overhead. Agarwal said the company had to optimize the way it collected and transmitted data from equipment to share only “calculated inputs,” or the change in a machine between two points in time.
However, that will soon change. Swarm is continually launching new satellites throughout the year, and Agarwal said the time between satellites appearing overhead will shrink to reduce the latency enough to allow mining companies to do more continuous monitoring of their machines.
The impact for mining companies could be significant, Agarwal said—including more proactive maintenance to prevent downtime, improved worker safety and the opportunity to optimize fuel consumption, reduce idling and cut down their greenhouse gas emissions. “It really prepares mining for the future because now we live in an environment where mining will have to happen in more and more remote locations, where no infrastructure exists, and there are prohibitive barriers because the investment cost in [communications] infrastructure is so huge,” he said.
At Cambrian College in Sudbury, the Centre for Smart Mining is in the midst of an expansion project that will see it become a research and development hub for BEV powertrain and battery performance testing.
The Centre for Smart Mining is a technology access centre that is federally funded through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to help the mining industry address technology adoption challenges. The centre initially put its focus on mining electrification through a training program for maintaining and servicing BEVs—recognizing that many mine employees who have worked on diesel vehicles will need upskilling. But Steve Gravel, the centre’s manager, said it uncovered a “gap in the R&D space where we’re most equipped to play” after speaking with more mining companies and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
“Oftentimes when electric equipment is designed for a use case, a lot of the battery sizing and powertrain sizing is done based on models, or what they can predict a piece of equipment is going to be used for. Some companies have found a mismatch between what the use is going to be and the actual duty cycle,” he said. “BEVs really only get tested at site, so [this] intermediary piece of research is to make sure [OEMs] guess right and design them correctly, so they match what mining companies expect to see in the field.”
Enter Cambrian’s BEV Lab, which is currently under construction and is slated to open in the fall of 2023. Centre for Smart Mining staff and Cambrian students will work with OEMs to test BEV powertrains and batteries before they are integrated into vehicle platforms. The lab will be stocked with electric motor dynamometers, which turn powertrains to simulate duty cycles, and battery simulation and emulation technology that test EV batteries of various sizes against upramp, downramp,
loading and unloading scenarios, as well as different vehicledriving behaviours.
The BEV Lab received a $350,000 cash infusion from Glencore in March, which is going towards the capital costs of the building, and has also received funding from the Ontario Research Fund, Canada Foundation for Innovation and other provincial and federal government sources.
Gravel said the BEV Lab will also advise mining companies looking at vehicle electrification on technical challenges, such as where to place battery charging stations, and help them simulate the impact of the change on their overall power usage.
When it opens, Gravel said the lab will have the ability to test powertrains and batteries of up to 600 kilowatts (kw), which he said covers roughly 80 per cent of the BEV powertrain market. (Light-duty utility vehicles have powertrains of between 50 to 150 kw, similar to an electric SUV; small narrow-vein scoop trams are roughly 200 to 250 kw; and larger mine vehicles have progressively larger powertrains.) But with OEMs like Epiroc and Sandvik working on powertrains that are approaching 1,000 kw, Gravel said the BEV Lab needs to raise additional funds to enhance its testing capacity.
Back at MIRARCO, Mykytczuk said her goal for the new centre is to create a collaborative space—a “friendly sandbox”— to prevent the development and adoption of biotechnologies from stalling out. The idea is for a not-for-profit facility that will engage major miners and small- and medium-sized enterprises across the industry, with a membership model and potential for shared intellectual property.
“Oftentimes when you create a facility that’s sponsored by only a single company or owned by a sector entity it dissuades other companies from joining in,” she said. “A challenge that we’ve seen with intellectual property in the past is that a lot of technology gets protected and then sits on a shelf. I would argue that with the pace and demand we’re going to see for batteries, electrification and critical minerals, we can’t afford…to not accelerate these things as fast as possible.” CIM
As Pride and Vision, the definitive work on the first century of CIM tells it, the annual general meetings of the past featured far more group singing than the current era. Early on, there was, in fact, a hymn book for the occasion. The tunes included the “Cobalt Song” to celebrate the place that, when the song was written in 1910, was the shining centre of the country’s mining industry. In the following year, it would produce 30 million ounces of silver. The silver boom—aided by a marketing push—also drew many more prospectors to the area, where a lucky few would hit it big in Porcupine (now Timmins) and Kirkland Lake.
You may talk about your cities and all the towns you know, With trolley cars and pavements hard and theatres where you go, You can have your little auto and carriages so fine, But it’s hobnail boots and a flannel shirt in Cobalt town for mine.
Old Porcupine’s a muskeg, Elk Lake a fire trap, New Liskeard’s just a country town and Haileybury’s just come back, You can buy the whole of Latchford for a nickel and a dime, But it’s hobnail boots and a flannel shirt in Cobalt town for mine.
Elk Lake was only a bubble, Gowganda had a few, Old Larder Lake was just a fake, Lorrain was a whisper too, Swastika is a rockpile, hot air is Porcupine, But it’s hobnail boots and a flannel shirt in Cobalt town for mine.
We’ve got the only Lang Street; there’s blind pigs everywhere, Old Cobalt Lake’s a dirty place, there’s mud all over the square, We’ve got the darndest railroad, that never runs on time, But it’s hobnail boots and a flannel shirt in Cobalt town for mine.
We’ve bet our dough on hockey and swore till the air was blue, The Cobalt stocks have emptied our socks with the dividends cut in two, They don’t get any of our money in darned old Porcupine, But it’s hobnail boots and a flannel shirt in Cobalt town for mine.
(Chorus)
For we’ll sing a little song of Cobalt, If you don’t live there it’s your fault, Oh you Cobalt, where the big gin rickies flow, Where all the silver comes from, And you live a life and then some, Oh you Cobalt, you’re the best old town I know.
Lyrics by L. F. Steenman
From the February 1910 edition of the Quarterly Bulletin of the Canadian Mining Institute.
CIM Life Member David K. Joyce has recorded a version of the song and, with the help of the Cobalt Historical Society, created great tribute to the place and the tune that bears its name.
Gold mining activity in Côte d’Ivoire has been ramping up: the country has quadrupled its gold production in the last decade. Now there is a new kid on the block.
Vancouver-based intermediate gold and silver producer Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. has recently started operations at Séguéla, an open-pit gold mine and processing plant, located approximately 500 kilometres from Côte d’Ivoire’s economic capital, Abidjan. The project promises to be a low-cost, highgrade operation in a gold mining hotspot.
“West Africa is the fastest growing gold-producing region in the world in terms of both resources and annual production. If you want to be in gold mining, it is certainly a place you want to be,” said Jorge Ganoza, CEO of Fortuna Silver Mines.
For Ganoza, one of the most distinguishing aspects of Séguéla is the project’s low operating cost. “According to the World Gold Council, 50 per cent of global gold is produced at an all-in sustaining cost of roughly US$1,300 per ounce. This mine will be producing well below that,” he said. Séguéla’s all-in sustaining cost over its current 8.6-year life of mine is expected to be US$832 per ounce.
One reason behind this statistic is the project’s unusually high grade. “The average grade of an open-pit gold mine in Nevada is around 0.4 grams. In West Africa, it’s about 1.1 to 1.5 grams. Here we are at 2.8 grams, so we have to move a lot less rock to produce our gold,” Ganoza explained.
Séguéla’s proximity to existing infrastructure also helps to reduce costs. Not only is the project accessible by (gravel) road, but it is only two kilometres away from existing power lines.
“We are connected to the national power grid. That’s a luxury for this part of the world,” said Ganoza, adding that the project would benefit from reduced emissions and energy costs as 45 per cent of Côte d’Ivoire’s power comes from hydroelectricity.
Easy access to suppliers and skilled labour helped keep construction costs down for the US$173 million project. “We have benefitted from West Africa’s mature cluster of service providers,” Ganoza said. “From excavations to mounting of equipment, power connection and work with high tension power lines, those service providers are well-established in the region because so many mines have been built.”
Séguéla is the ninth gold mine to start operations in in Côte d’Ivoire in the recent past. The country has been experiencing increasing mining activity since it regained stability after the Second Ivorian Civil War ended in 2011.
Fortuna took control of Séguéla as part of a US$844 million merger and acquisition deal with Roxgold in 2021—Yaramoko, a producing gold mine in Burkina Faso, was also part of the package.
At the time, Fortuna’s operations were centred in Latin America, and Ganoza was looking for an opportunity to enter
West Africa. “We followed the success of the Roxgold team from their start at Yaramoko in 2015,” Ganoza recalled. “Combining our companies provided Fortuna with a platform for continued growth in one of the most prolific gold regions in the world.”
Shortly after the acquisition closed in July 2021, Fortuna embarked on updating Séguéla’s April 2021 feasibility study.
“We took a few months to revisit the construction plan and the capital cost figures,” Ganoza explained. “As an outcome of that, we expanded the budget from US$148 million to US$173 million to account for the inflationary environment.”
Thanks to cash flow from four operating mines in Argentina, Burkina Faso, Mexico and Peru, Fortuna was well-positioned to fund the project.
Séguéla has proven and probable reserves of 1.1 million ounces of gold from 12.1 million tonnes, grading 2.8 grams per tonne, based on findings at five deposits. Current figures project an 8.6-year mine life with an average annual production of 120,000 ounces of gold.
The project, which broke ground in March 2021, is a rarity in the industry: it will be completed on time and on budget. Fortuna started peak excavations in February 2023 and began commissioning activities in early April. First gold is projected for this May, with ramp-up to nameplate capacity expected by August 2023.
Plans for the open-pit mine and processing plant are similar to other success stories in the region. “The beauty is in its simplicity: the geology is well understood, it’s got really good grades for an open-pit cut, and a conventional milling circuit. There’s probably 30 of these mines across West Africa,” said Paul Weedon, Fortuna’s senior vice-president, exploration. “It’s a simple process we could bring through at a fairly quick pace.”
The five deposits will be mined year-round with a conventional open-pit mining method: drilling and blasting activities, followed by truck and shovel operations to move ore and waste materials. The five-metre benches will be excavated in two passes as 2.5-metre flitches. Mining has already started at Antenna, the largest deposit, and will begin at Koula later this year. To maintain production stability, multiple deposits will be mined simultaneously and ore will be stockpiled. Other satellite
pits have been scheduled to come into production in stages, starting with the highest-grade pits.
Ore will only have to travel 500 metres from Antenna to the processing plant, where it will be fed to the primary jaw crushers, over to the surge bin and on to the semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mill—all these components come from Metso Outotec. Then it will pass through a gravity concentration circuit, a carbon-in-leach circuit, carbon elution and a gold recovery circuit.
For power, Séguéla tied into a nearby 90-kilovolt line and built a substation next to the processing facility.
Tailings will be sent to a side-valley storage facility formed by two multi-zoned earthfill embankments, built using the downstream construction methodology.
According to Ganoza, the plant is identical to the one at Yaramoko, except with a higher throughput capacity: at startup, the plant is expected to process 1.25 million tonnes per annum, and throughput at peak production (in year three) is expected to be 1.57 million tonnes.
The most complex aspect of the operation was getting the processing plant built on time and on budget despite challenges posed by inflation, supply chain disruptions and rising energy costs. At peak construction, approximately 1,200 people were employed by the project.
“We awarded a lump sum agreement to Lycopodium for $85 million to build the processing plant,” he explained. “It was a turnkey scope for the processing plant, which helped minimize risk of deviation for us.”
Partnering with Lycopodium was a no-brainer for Ganoza. “They have built over 80 to 90 per cent of all the mines in the region over the past decade,” he said. “They know who is good and who isn’t in different areas, from accelerated electromechanical works and piping to automation.”
Fortuna further offset risks by allocating US$11 million to early works. “We placed purchase orders for key equipment packages, advanced detailed engineering and completed the construction of the camp, all before we went public with the construction decision,” Ganoza explained. “By the time we were ready to start construction, we were able to immediately mobilize the workforce, instead of waiting five months for the camp to be built.”
To operate the mine, Fortuna has hired Mota-Engil, a Portuguese company with expertise in engineering and construction, waste management and logistics. “They have roots in West Africa for 40 years,” said Ganoza. “They have 5,000 employees in Côte d’Ivoire and do waste management for the city of Abidjan.”
At peak operations, Ganoza estimates the mine will employ 600 people, with most coming from the surrounding area. “We rely on a small group of expat experts, but it’s been and will continue to be a largely Ivorian workforce,” he said.
Even with construction in full swing throughout 2022, and wrapping up in 2023, Fortuna continued drilling on its 62,200hectare property.
“It’s a time when many companies slow down the pace of exploration, but we continued to be aggressive,” said Ganoza. The company budgeted US$12 million for exploration in 2022, and an additional US$9 million for 2023. By mid-March the company had drilled nearly half of its 9,500-metre program.
So far, its efforts have paid off: Fortuna is currently conducting infill drilling at a sixth deposit, known as Sunbird. In Decem-
Location
kilometres northwest of Séguéla, Côte d’Ivoire
*Estimates
Source: Fortuna Silver Mines
ber 2022, the company reported Sunbird’s first indicated resource at 279,000 ounces of gold out of 3.2 million tonnes, with a grade of 2.66 grams per tonne, and updated inferred resources to 506,000 ounces of gold out of 4.2 million tonnes, grading at 3.73 grams per tonne. Fortuna plans to add the deposit to the project’s reserve later this year.
According to Weedon, the geology of Séguéla’s terrain is typical of the region: the project is situated on the Birimian greenstone belt, which extends through Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso. The deposits at Séguéla are orogenic lode-style systems.
“At Séguéla, the mineralization itself is quartz with some carbonate. We get a lot of free gold, so we actually record visible gold as one of our logging codes,” he described.
Weedon has been with the project since it was acquired by Roxgold from Newcrest Mining in 2019. “When we acquired it, it had about 400,000 ounces and a third resource on it,” he recalled. “Now we’re getting close to two million ounces in resource. We’ve done a lot of geophysics, a lot more mapping, a lot more soil geochemistry and a substantial amount of additional drilling. And that’s continuing to this day.”
On top of Sunbird, Weedon’s team has identified four prospective targets where it will focus efforts this year. Exploration will also be advancing at depth in late 2023 and into 2024.
According to Weedon, orogenic deposits tend to run deep, so there is a lot of underground potential. “Some of the bigger deposits in West Africa run more than two kilometres deep,” he said. “The deepest drilling we’ve got is about 550 vertical metres, and we haven’t followed that up yet because we’ve been too focused on the open drill. We’re not even close to exhausting Séguéla’s potential.”
Fortuna is also pursuing exploration further afield. “We’ve got exploration programs under way at other properties in Côte d’Ivoire, and we’re actively looking to see if we can further increase our footprint. We’re also assessing opportunities in neighbouring countries to see where we can grow,” Weedon reported. CIM
Robert Horn, writing in 2002 in his capacity as vice-president, exploration with INCO, had exploration experience that included exploration projects in Africa, Australia, Europe and the Americas. In his comprehensive review “Metals exploration in a changing industry,” Horn urged greater cooperation among mining companies in their exploration efforts. He also had little patience for the bluster of his peers.
The subject of ore genesis has a very large and growing field of knowledge. Geologists who are technical experts tend to specialize in particular ore types so that a Sedex lead-zinc person would not contribute much to a discussion on magmatic nickel sulphides. This specialization is damaging. The processes of ore formation are the same over many different styles of mineralization. The migration of metal-bearing fluid through sediments and the precipitation of the metals is the same process for zinc in the Mississippi Valley deposits, diagenetic replacement at McArthur River, Queensland, carbonate replacement at Cerro de Pasco, Peru, copper in the Weissliegende of the Zechstein Basin or Lower Roan sediments, gold in the Popovich Formation of Nevada and uranium in the granites of central France. The difference is in the nature of the fluid, its temperature, pressure and chemistry, determined in part by its source and its migration path, and the conditions under which the metals precipitate. It is the process that is important, not the artificial classification into MVT, porphyry copper or Sedex.
The phrase “ore deposit models” has been common jargon among geologists for the past thirty years. It adds a spurious scientific patina to very simple descriptions of the common geology of groups of orebodies. They are often no more than simple guides that are so elementary that they can scarcely be described as geology. The technical definitions of MVT zinc, VMS copper and zinc, vein-unconformity uranium, Red Bed copper, epithermal gold and Sedex zinc are embarrassingly elementary. When they become more sophisticated and detailed, the classifications fall apart. Are reefs important for MVT zinc deposits? Not in the Mississippi Valley. How many copper deposits are there in red beds of the Zambia-Congo copperbelt? None to the author’s knowledge, yet the myth persists. Where are there deposits of the style of the world’s two largest nickel mining districts, Noril’sk and Sudbury? Only at Noril’sk and Sudbury. Geological reasoning can only be used effectively in a district with clear associations of ore and geological setting.
Nickel sulphide exploration differs from that of copper and zinc in that ore model types are not widely used. This is because there are very few major nickel ore districts (<5) so that classification is meaningless. The theoretical geologists studying nickel tend to consider processes rather than models. Conceptually this is better than the model approach because new ore types may be extrapolated from theory where the “model” cannot project beyond the range of known orebodies. In spite of this, the author knows of no case where a nickel deposit was discovered mainly as a consequence of theoretical knowledge of ore-forming processes.
The fundamental controls to ore concentration are very poorly known. Metals on the earth’s surface are concentrated irregularly even in identical rocks of the same age and lithology. Archean volcanogenic copper-zinc is very rare outside of North America, the Carajás district of Brazil contains a unique accumulation of high-grade iron but also major deposits of gold, manganese, nickel and copper. The Cordillera of Peru is a mining district containing zinc in carbonate replacement and other deposits; even a porphyry skarn orebody, Antamina, contains recoverable zinc. Mercury in Spain is mined at Almadén but also appears in unusually high concentrations in epithermal gold deposits. The author knows of no satisfactory explanation for these and many other anomalous concentrations and associations of metals on a regional scale. A further observation is the frequency that major structures are found near orebodies, not just in sedimentary-hosted zinc, epithermal gold and porphyry copper deposits but in magmatic nickel. All the major nickel deposits in Canada—Sudbury, Thompson, Raglan and Voisey’s Bay—are situated on plate boundaries. It appears likely to the author that the mantle is the ultimate source of metals for many ore types.
Our ignorance of the mode of formation of orebodies means that the probability of making a discovery is unknown from geological reasoning. Exploring close to major deposits may be the best strategy because they are themselves evidence that processes that form ore deposits are known to have existed. However, the presence of a major deposit may point to exactly the opposite conclusion that most of the metals have been already concentrated.
Exploration around the world’s largest lead-zinc-silver mine at Broken Hill, New South Wales, over more than one hundred years or the huge Kidd Creek VMS deposit has produced very little. On the other hand Barrick’s move into the Carlin trend in the 1980s, where several major gold deposits were known, proved highly successful to the extent that it brought a relatively small company into the front rank of gold miners. Arizona porphyry copper deposits are scattered like confetti while Bingham Canyon sits in solitary splendour. For every orebody that was discovered in the mythical shadow of the headframe, there are probably an equal number such as Cominco’s Red Dog or INCO’s Voisey’s Bay that until their discovery were situated in what was no doubt until then excellent moose, or at least caribou, pasture. CIM
Working in unstable environments is a particularly demanding task in underground mining operations. “Ground control is typically almost always the bottleneck in the mining cycle,” explained Steve Denomme, product manager of bolters at MacLean Engineering. “The time that it takes, the trickiness to it and the challenges you’re dealing with in terms of ground conditions.”
As mining operations go deeper, underground stresses change and create new challenges around ground control that companies need to address. “We’re dealing with different ground stresses,” Denomme said. “Stresses change, rockbursts change and hazards start to become more apparent.”
With mining companies looking for ways to improve ground control safety and operational efficiency, whether by going remote for workers’ physical safety or applying existing data in new ways, new products and applications promise to help navigate the challenging and changing conditions.
MacLean is updating its 900 series bolter, which has already spent 30 years on the market, with new technology to continue keeping up with the industry.
Companies are turning to ground control technologies that support remote operations and provide new insights from existing dataCourtesy of MacLean Engineering MacLean Engineering has been testing a proof of concept of its upcoming 985-Abi bolter at its research and development facility and test mine in Sudbury.
The standard 900 series bolter was originally designed with an eye for safety as MacLean created a platform-based bolter to remove the operator from the drilling area. The worker could be at risk while moving bolts and screens if stresses in the rock wall led to a rockburst, and the platform would always provide the best protection from these wall stresses, Denomme explained. “We were able to evolve [our bolter] to make sure that the operator was able to do their job but located in the safest position,” he said. “It’s really made a difference specifically in the Canadian mining industry, where we’d seen lots of fatalities before the MacLean bolter and virtually none after.”
“We’re working really hard on the automation and digitalization pieces of the industry transition,” said Stuart Lister, vicepresident of marketing and communications at MacLean. While part of that has been the electrification of its products—there are currently 50-plus MacLean battery electric vehicles, including EV bolters, that have been shipped—the other part has been updating its bolter with robotics technology.
With customers expressing interest in completing bolting tasks teleremotely, MacLean is looking to recreate its bolter with a robot acting in the operator’s seat. “Instead of [an operator] doing the manual labour of putting screens and bolts into the right positions, we have trained the robot to act as an operator on the deck, [meaning] the operator is fully removed,” said Denomme.
With its upcoming 985-Abi bolter, the company’s goal is to package everything into an enclosed cab and enable the robotic bolter to support teleremote operation from elsewhere in the mine or the surface. Denomme and the team have been testing a proof of concept of this bolter at MacLean’s research and development facility and test mine in Sudbury, Ontario, for the past year.
“Our biggest challenge right now is to get good at the remote operation from a chair instead of being up there on the deck,” Denomme explained. “The robot is doing amazing work, but the operator having to sit back, drill holes and find that hole to put resin and bolts in, that’s what we’re [working on] learning right now.”
While the test unit has helped MacLean’s engineers learn what works and what does not, the company plans to have the final product packaged this fall and to pilot the new technology with customers in January 2024. “The objective of this test unit was to learn a lot about [applying] robotic technology and what it looks like for us to be remotely operating,” Denomme said. “Training the robot to act like an operator is no easy task, but we’re really close.”
With rock bolting crews being the first line of defence when it comes to ground control, companies are looking at other ways to keep workers at a greater distance from harm’s way.
For Normet, that means looking to make the bolting process remote by using self-drilling dynamic bolts (SDDB) with pumpable resin. Standard bolts necessitate workers to drill a hole before insertion, but in high rock-stress conditions, there is a chance that rock fragments may enter the borehole or that cavitation itself may compromise the effectiveness of standard cartridge resins. Normet’s SDDB and pumpable resin can address these issues while also allowing workers to keep their distance. They may be coupled together to provide a longer dynamic support component required in large opening spans such as drift intersections.
“Essentially, when you blast underground, you have already created fractures at this surface opening; it cannot hold stress as it is previously failed,” explained Allan Punkkinen, ground
control technical specialist at Normet Canada. “A seismic event will be reflected at the boundary of this fracture zone, any threaded section of the SDDB within this area will supplement the surface support, which ties the bolts together as a system. Within the intact rock behind, the smooth bar section design of the SDDB will then provide high elongation (stretch capacity) as a dynamic support.”
Normet offers three R32 styles of SDDB. This new generation of ground support is based on its predecessor, the self-drilling anchor (SDA), Punkkinen said. Essentially, the SDDB is an SDA with a ductile smooth bar section to achieve the desired yield, strength and elongation requirements. The styles are grouped based on the inside diameter of the bar and are classified as Groups A-C. As the tube wall thickness increases, so does the yield and ultimate strength of the bar.
The Nevada type “Group A” has a very thin wall diameter so that the bolt can elongate earlier, giving it a lower yield strength, while the Nordic type “Group B” is the intermediate bolt. The recently introduced Onaping type “Group C” provides the highest yield and ultimate strength, and is the preferred bolt as a secondary support.
The ground control engineer can select the design (length of bar, thread and smooth section) for the mine’s requirements. “We have installed probably a quarter of a million of them underground over the last few years, and they’ve performed very well in primary support installations without a bit and as coupled secondary support,” said Punkkinen. “And if you are in bad ground, you can put a 41-millimetre sacrificial bit on there, drill the hole, leave the bit in and then inject the bolt with pumpable resin.”
Normet’s latest Group C design, as with all the other styles, has been tested at Canmet Mining laboratory in Kanata along with injected Normet resin. The bolts have been pull-tested underground in a connected configuration with minimum resin to lock in the thread at the end of the borehole.
“They’re working really well [for connecting], we have optimized the bolter settings and we are now doing a bulk underground installation to familiarize the miners doing the installation,” said Punkkinen. “[There are] mines looking at replacing cable bolts with these, and that’s a huge advantage even in terms of quality control of installation. The cost may be higher for the resins because the resin is probably the highest
cost portion of the whole system, but if you could get bolted right away and not have to come back for secondary support, then that’s the advantage. Time is money when it comes to getting to the ore quicker.”
At RockEng, a rock engineering consulting firm based in Kingston, Ontario, consultants work with miners to optimize their ground control systems and practices. Anna Perry, a senior geomechanics consultant at RockEng, joined the company six years ago and has seen different technologies gain ground with mining companies.
One technology she has seen get picked up for ground control applications is software for spatially referencing geotechnical data. Perry pointed to Seequent’s Leapfrog Geo software as an example, which allows a miner to view geotechnical data spatially with geological modelling and excavation as-builts or designs of a mine, project or exploration site. “This is really helpful for looking for patterns in your data in order to delineate geotechnical domains, which is what we use as an input for mine design,” she said.
Perry thinks there is still room for improvement with software packages, as there is not one that addresses all of a miner’s needs. “If we could come up with a program with integrated geologic modelling, mine design and geotechnical tools, it would benefit the mining industry,” she stated. “Right now, the different software packages available have some of these things, but not all. And if it’s not easy to view, mining engineers may not use all the available data.”
Another technology Perry has seen being picked up in ground control practices is light detection and ranging (LiDAR) scanning. “Even 10 years ago, it was common to have to do cavity monitoring surveys,” she said. “But these LiDAR scanners can be on drones, which can fly into stopes and collect much more detailed data of the excavations.”
After being seconded at Rio Tinto’s Diavik diamond mine in the Northwest Territories and Newmont’s Musselwhite gold mine in Ontario, Perry saw how using LiDAR technology can help miners by collecting more detailed 3D survey data. As an example, Emesent’s Hovermap drone can map LiDAR data above and below ground, and allows miners to collect data from unsafe or inaccessible areas. “There is enough detail in the scans to see the geology and structural fabric within stopes, which otherwise we don’t have the tools to know about because they are nonentry excavations,” she explained. “These more detailed scans allow us to make better planning decisions and have potential for use for geotechnical site characterization.”
This can involve simply looking at data from tools and technology miners already use, such as data from drills or bolters, not necessarily new data. “Some sites will be really proactive about trying to implement new technologies, whereas some sites might not immediately implement something that would be useful, even though the technology is available,” Perry said. “There is a wide range in how quickly new technologies get implemented at different sites.”
“They all have opportunities for better utilization of the data that we’re already collecting.” CIM
GROUND CONTROL
Member of CIM’s Current Mine Developments Committee and engineer at Crowsnest Pass Coal Company L.M. Dwarkin shared an exciting new development in ground control at the Annual Western Meeting in Calgary in October 1951.
That roof bolting is more than an attractive theory has been proven by its successful application in the United States during the past few years. It was introduced to coal mining in 1947 by the U.S. Bureau of Mines as a possible means of reducing roof fall hazards. Since then, its use has become so widespread that in the 12 months ending July 1st, 1950, some 354 coal mines and 19 metal mines bolted approximately 43 million square feet of roof.
Many advantages are inherent in the method, both as to safety and economy. In regard to safety, the hazard of accidental prop dislodgment, with its accompanying falls of roof, is removed. This very materially improves safety at the face, especially when mobile machinery is used. The bolts, although installed within inches of the face, cannot be dislodged by blasting. The presence of bolts actually helps prevent shatter of the immediate roof during blasting. The improved headroom and side-room reduce the ‘caught between’ type of accident and also benefit ventilation by decreasing resistance to air flow. An average increase of 15 per cent in volume of air is reported. Since loading machines can operate unhampered from rib to rib, less fine coal is left behind to be ground into dust. Roof bolting has succeeded under some very difficult roof conditions and instances are cited where roof bolts held while adjacent orthodox timbering failed.
With regard to economy, the cost of material for roof bolting is generally higher than for wood though comparable with steel timbering. Labour cost is
about the same and can be reduced by using special bolting machinery. The big savings are in coal getting, particularly with mobile equipment.
Cutting and loading machines are allowed to operate without the interference of props or legs and their capacity is thereby increased. A saving of from 15 to 50 per cent in loading time is reported. In some instances the better support provided by roof bolting makes possible a widening of rooms, which leads to higher productivity per mining cycle. Roof bolts can hold up cap-rock which must otherwise come down. This, and a decrease in roof falls generally, leads to a cleaner coal and a smaller volume of rock to handle.
Some incidental gains are: less demand on the haulage system and for storage room because roof bolting material is less bulky than timber; the bolts provide handy means for hanging cables, pipes, brattice, etc.
It must not be concluded from the above that roof bolting is a panacea that will cure all roof conditions or turn uneconomical mines into bonanzas. Roof bolting provides greater safety only if conditions for bolting are suitable. There must be a competent bed of rock present in order that the immediate roof be hung from it and only if the immediate roof is of a suitable nature can it be bound into a self-supporting beam. Any new installation must be preceded by careful experimentation to determine whether roof bolting is feasible, what pattern to use and whether it is economically justified.
As to economic considerations, the greatest gains from roof bolting may be expected in highly mechanized operations. For example, one mine reported that roof bolting increased tons per man-shift from 55 to 100 per cent in sections using mechanical loading, but there was no increase in sections using hand loading. Not only are the roof bolting materials more expensive than timber but, to reduce the labour cost and to promote an efficient bolting technique, investment in high capacity, expensive bolting machinery becomes desirable. Such expenditure is best justified in mechanical mining, where returns from employment of the method are greatest. However, in mines where bolting may not be worthwhile from a purely economic standpoint, it may still be of value in individual locations where first cost is not the prime consideration. CIM
The CIM Awards honour industry’s finest for their outstanding contributions in various fields. Their achievements and dedication are what make Canada’s global mineral industry a force to be reckoned with.
CIM
Medal
Vale Medal for Meritorious Contributions to Mining | Médaille Vale pour des contributions méritoires à l’exploitation manière
Selwyn Blaylock Canadian Mining Excellence Award | Prix d’excellence Selwyn Blaylock pour l’exploitation minière canadienne
A.O. Dufresne Exploration Achievement Award | Prix A.O. Dufresne pour des accomplissements remarquables en exploration
Skeena Resources
Eskay Deposit Exploration Team
J.C. Sproule Northern Exploration Award | Prix J.C. Sproule pour l’exploration dans le Nord
Dr. Craig Hart University of British Columbia
Kurt Strobele Hatch
Stéfanie Vo Hatch
George B. Darling Mineit Consulting
Distinguished Service
| Médaille ICM pour services remarquables
Keith N. Spence Global Mining Capital
CIM Fellowship | Confrérie de l’ICM
District Distinguished Service Award | Prix de l’ICM pour services remarquables par district
Mel W. Bartley Outstanding Branch Award | Prix Mel W. Bartley pour les accomplissements remarquables d’une section locale
CIM Sudbury Branch
McParland Memorial Award for Excellence in Maintenance Engineering and Reliability | Prix commémoratif McParland pour l’excellence en matière du génie, de la maintenance et de la fiabilité
Martin Provencher AVEVA
Mining Engineering Outstanding Achievement Award | Prix pour des accomplissements remarquables en génie minier
Jim Gusek
Linkan Engineering
Julian Boldy Geological Society Service Award | Prix Julian Boldy de la société de la géologie
Theresa Nyabeze
Vale
Robert Elver Mineral Economics Award | Le prix d’économie des minéraux Robert Elver Mauro Chiesa (Posthumous)
CIM-Bedford Canadian Young Leaders Awards | Les prix Jeunes Leaders Canadiens du Secteur Minier ICM-Bedford
Mining Safety Leadership Medal | Médaille pour le leadership dans la sécurité minière
Hatch-CIM Mining & Minerals Project Development Safety Award | Prix pour la sécurité des chantiers dans le domaine des mines et du minerai de Hatch-ICM
Don MacLean MacLean Engineering Kemano T2
Regional Metal Trophy, BC / Yukon New Gold Inc., New Afton Mine
Regional Metal Trophy, Prairies & Territories Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., Meliadine Mine
Regional Select Trophy, West Nutrien, Rocanville Mine
Regional Metal Trophy, Quebec/Atlantic Hecla Québec, Mine Casa Berardi
Regional Select Trophy, East Atlantic Mining NS Inc (St Barbara Ltd.), Touquoy Mine
Regional Metal Trophy, Ontario Vale Canada Ltd., Coleman Mine
Technology
Lake Shore Gold, Timmins West Mine
Excellence in Sustainable Development Award | Prix pour l’excellence en développement durable
Towards Sustainable Mining Excellence Awards | Prix de l’initiative Vers le développement minier durable
Community Engagement Excellence
Diavik Mine’s Turning Copper into ‘Gold’ project – Rio Tinto
Alistair Kent Merit Consultants International Inc.
At the time of a continuing rebound of metal markets, learn how the application of new digital technologies can add substantial value to strategic mine planning and asset valuation. The new technologies and related tools integrate technical risk management while capitalizing on the synergies amongst the elements of mineral value chains through their simultaneous optimization—from mines to products to markets.
INSTRUCTORS Roussos Dimitrakopoulos, McGill University, Canada, and Ryan Goodfellow, Newmont, USA
• PLACE Montreal, QC • DATE September 13-15, 2023
This course is designed according to the latest regulations on public reporting of Mineral Resources. It aims at showing how state-of-the-art statistical and geostatistical techniques help answer the requirements of those regulations in an objective and reproducible manner. A particular emphasis is put on understanding sampling and estimation errors and related uncertainties, as well as how to assign levels of estimation confidence through the application of resource classification fundamentals. In addition to a solid introduction to mining geostatistics, this course provides a comprehensive overview of how modern techniques, such as conditional simulations, are currently applied in the industry.
INSTRUCTORS David F. Machuca, SRK Consulting, Canada, and Roussos Dimitrakopoulos, McGill University, Canada • PLACE Montreal, QC • DATE September 25-29, 2023
Chaque numéro du CIM Magazine commence par quelques idées légèrement définies : une tendance croissante, un point de vue sur une juridiction ou une technologie émergente. Certaines idées ne valent pas la peine d’être poursuivies en fin de compte et d’autres nous entraînent dans des directions que nous n’avions pas prévues au départ. En fin de compte, nous remplissons les pages avec des histoires, une structure et une orientation qui entrent en conversation avec le moment présent. Ce faisant, nous faisons de nouvelles découvertes et ouvrons des perspectives pour les numéros à venir.
Avec ce numéro 125 commémoratif, nous avons créé une tâche parallèle. Guidés par des sujets contemporains, nous avons fouillé dans les archives pour trouver du matériel qui compléterait les thèmes actuels de l’exploitation minière. Certaines découvertes nous ont mis la puce à l’oreille, comme la solution analogique présentée dans le Bulletin du CIM de 1949 (p. 39) pour relever le défi permanent de l’arpentage souterrain. Aujourd’hui, ce défi est relevé grâce à la technologie des drones, que l’écrivaine Lynn Greiner décrit dans « Underground aviation » (p. 36, uniquement en anglais).
Dans la chronique de 1899 que nous avons exhumée (p. 28, uniquement en anglais), l’appel à former des employés qualifiés et instruits pour soutenir les opérations trouve un écho aujourd’hui, bien qu’avec une teneur différente : L’auteur souhaitait simplement que l’enseignement des sciences fondamentales soit disponible. Apparemment éduqué en Grande-Bretagne, il dirigeait une fonderie à l’intérieur de la Colombie-Britannique et reconnaissait l’énorme fossé entre ses origines et son placement dans la jeune province. Bien que la province aurait pu en bénéficier, il reconnaissait que la Colombie-Britannique n’était pas prête à accueillir une institution telle que la Royal School of Mines de Londres, et qu’un établissement d’enseignement supérieur ne serait même pas approprié. « En effet, on m’a forcé à comprendre que le travail de qualité n’est pas recherché, ou du moins pas apprécié en Colombie-Britannique—plus c’est grossier, mieux c’est, d’habitude».
Un extrait d’un article de 1982 sur les progrès réalisés en matière de forage de puits (p. 38, uniquement en anglais) souligne l’importance du financement des projets expérimentaux. C’est un bon rappel pour notre pays, qui n’a pas donné la priorité à la recherche et au développement et qui est loin derrière ses pairs de l’OCDE en matière de financement de la recherche et du développement.
D’autres articles tirés des archives du CIM sont disséminés au fil des pages. Ce numéro—comme beaucoup d’autres initiatives liées au 125e anniversaire— s’inspire également de deux ouvrages remarquables publiés à l’occasion du centenaire du CIM en 1998. Pride and Vision, écrit par E. Tina Crossfield, est un récit complet des 100 premières années de l’Institut. A Century of Achievement, de John Udd, retrace l’histoire de l’industrie minière canadienne. Ces deux ouvrages ont été mis en page grâce à la vision de Peter Tarassoff, président du comité de rédaction de l’histoire de l’ICM, et au soutien de la Corporation du centenaire de l’ICM.
En feuilletant les archives physiques et en ligne des 125 dernières années, nous avons trouvé tant de délices et de surprises. Il n’y avait pas de méthode précise pour notre recherche, mais sur ce point, le dernier mot revient à M. Robert Horn qui, dans un bulletin du CIM de 2002, écrit sur la formule insaisissable de la découverte : « Les gisements de cuivre porphyrique de l’Arizona sont dispersés comme des confettis, tandis que Bingham Canyon est d’une splendeur solitaire. Pour chaque gisement découvert dans l’ombre mythique du chevalement, il y en a probablement autant, comme Red Dog de Cominco ou Voisey’s Bay d’INCO qui, jusqu’à leur découverte, étaient situés dans ce qui était sans aucun doute jusqu’alors d’excellents pâturages à orignaux ou au moins à caribous ».
Ryan Bergen, Rédacteur en chef editor@cim.org
L’ICM fête une année charnière en 2023. La charte fédérale du 18 juin 1898 marquait officiellement la naissance de l’Institut canadien des mines, qui devenait par la suite l’Institut canadien des mines, de la métallurgie et du pétrole, ou ICM, tel que nous le connaissons aujourd’hui.
Je fais partie de l’ICM depuis le début des années 2000, mais pour son 125e anniversaire, j’ai souhaité me plonger davantage dans son histoire. J’ai consulté l’ouvrage Pride and Vision d’E. Tina Crossfield, qui fait la chronique de l’ICM et célèbre son premier centenaire.
L’ICM trouve ses racines dans les premières associations minières provinciales, avec une représentation nationale d’est en ouest. L’expansion rapide de l’exploitation minière au Canada, comme l’indique l’autrice, s’explique par le développement du réseau ferroviaire et le besoin de minéraux qui constituaient les principaux facteurs de l’ouverture de ce secteur au Canada. L’exploitation du charbon a commencé au début du XVIIIe siècle sur l’île du Cap-Breton. C’est aux Forges du Saint-Maurice, au Québec, que la première fonderie de minerai de fer du Canada a ouvert ses portes en 1729. La richesse minérale du Bouclier canadien a été découverte dans les années 1860. Quant aux gisements de cuivre et de nickel du bassin de Sudbury, ils ont été découverts dans les années 1880.
Au vu de cette croissance, les membres de l’industrie minière se sont aussi rapidement rendu compte qu’ils avaient besoin d’organisations spécifiques à cette industrie afin d’être mieux informés, d’informer le grand public et de donner une voix à l’industrie. L’ICM faisait partie de ces organisations.
Pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, l’ICM a joué un rôle important en conseillant un comité gouvernemental quant à
l’approvisionnement en minéraux identifiés comme essentiels dans l’effort de guerre. Après la guerre, l’ICM a développé des sections techniques et des comités, dont la plupart ont évolué en sociétés, celles que l’on connaît aujourd’hui.
Tout au long de cette période, de nouvelles sections et sociétés ont été formées, et de nouveaux comités créés afin de répondre aux besoins des membres d’une part, et de suivre les changements et l’innovation dans l’industrie d’autre part. Les sections et les sections étudiantes conservent la plus grande portée dans le pays et constituent le point de départ de l’interaction entre l’ICM et nombre de ses membres.
L’ICM a traversé des périodes de changement en termes de démographie de ses membres, de sa structure interne et des cycles économiques miniers. Pour suivre cette évolution, il a accordé une grande attention à sa mission et sa stratégie. L’histoire du centenaire de l’institut que présente E. Tina Crossfield de manière si éloquente dans Pride and Vision prend fin en 1997-1998, lorsque le président de l’ICM à l’époque, Sandy Laird, déclarait que l’objectif fondamental de l’ICM était d’offrir à ses membres des possibilités d’approfondir leurs connaissances et de nouer des liens. Ces deux principes directeurs restent les grands piliers des plans stratégiques de l’ICM, aujourd’hui et demain.
Je tiens à remercier Anne Marie Toutant et ses prédécesseurs, l’équipe très engagée du bureau national de l’ICM et vous toutes et tous, nos membres, pour tous vos efforts qui ont permis à l’ICM d’occuper la place qu’il occupe aujourd’hui. Nous comptons plus de 10 000 membres individuels et 124 membres corporatifs. Nous avons 30 sections réparties dans tout le pays, 11 sociétés couvrant tout un éventail de disciplines de l’industrie, 11 comités et 10 sections étudiantes. Nous organisons des événements de renommée internationale, publions des normes, des lignes directrices et des pratiques exemplaires reconnues dans le monde entier, et produisons un contenu technique de qualité qui promeut notre industrie.
Joyeux 125e anniversaire à l’ICM ! C’est avec fierté que nous regardons en arrière et contemplons notre histoire et nos contributions à l’industrie. Pour les années à venir, nous nous efforcerons de préserver notre vision et de rester au service de nos membres.
Mike Cinnamond Président de l’ICM
La mine de Séguéla de Fortuna Silver Mines commence l’exploitation à haute teneur et à bas prix alors que se poursuit l’exploration, en quête d’or
Par Dinah Zeldin
L’activité d’extraction aurifère en Côte d’Ivoire ne cesse de croître. Au cours de la dernière décennie, le pays a multiplié par quatre sa production d’or. Aujourd’hui, un petit nouveau fait son apparition sur le devant de la scène.
Fortuna Silver Mines Inc., une société de production d’or et d’argent de taille moyenne basée à Vancouver, a récemment commencé ses activités à Séguéla, un complexe minier comprenant une mine d’or à ciel ouvert et une usine de traitement situées à environ 500 kilomètres de la capitale économique de la Côte d’Ivoire, Abidjan. Le projet promet de donner vie à une exploitation à bas prix et à haute teneur, dans un haut lieu de l’exploitation aurifère.
« L’Afrique occidentale est la région productrice d’or affichant la plus forte croissance dans le monde en termes de ressources et de production annuelle. Si vous voulez vous lancer dans l’exploitation aurifère, c’est l’endroit où aller », déclarait Jorge Ganoza, directeur général de Fortuna Silver Mines.
Pour lui, l’un des aspects les plus distinctifs de Séguéla concerne le coût d’exploitation relativement bas du projet. « D’après le World Gold Council (WGC, le conseil mondial de l’or), 50 % de l’or à l’échelle mondiale est produit à des coûts nécessaires au maintien de la production d’environ 1 300 dollars américains l’once. Cette mine produira à un coût bien inférieur », indiquait-il. Sur toute la durée de vie de Séguéla, estimée aujour-
d’hui à 8,6 ans, ces coûts devraient être de 832 dollars américains l’once.
L’une des raisons de ce coût inférieur est la haute teneur inhabituelle du projet. « La teneur moyenne d’une mine à ciel ouvert au Nevada est d’environ 0,4 gramme. En Afrique de l’Ouest, elle est d’environ 1,1 à 1,5 gramme. Dans notre exploitation, nous sommes à 2,8 grammes, alors nous avons besoin de bouger beaucoup moins de roche pour produire notre or », expliquait M. Ganoza.
La proximité de Séguéla à une infrastructure existante contribue aussi à réduire les coûts. Le projet est non seulement accessible par la route (de graviers), mais il se trouve également à seulement deux kilomètres des lignes électriques existantes.
« Nous sommes reliés au réseau électrique national. C’est un luxe dans cette région du monde », expliquait M. Ganoza, ajoutant que le projet produira moins d’émissions et bénéficiera de coûts énergétiques réduits car 45 % de l’électricité de Côte d’Ivoire est issue de l’hydroélectricité.
L’accès facile aux fournisseurs et à une main-d’œuvre qualifiée a permis de maintenir des coûts de construction relativement faibles pour ce projet de 173 millions de dollars américains.
« Nous avons bénéficié de l’expertise d’un groupe chevronné de prestataires de services d’Afrique occidentale », indiquait M. Ganoza. « Des excavations à l’installation du matériel, aux branchements électriques et aux travaux sur les lignes à haute
tension, ces prestataires de services sont bien établis dans la région, car tant de mines ont déjà été construites. »
Un bref historique
Séguéla est la neuvième mine d’or à commencer ses activités en Côte d’Ivoire. La fin de la seconde guerre civile ivoirienne en 2011 a marqué le retour de la stabilité. Depuis, le pays connaît une activité minière croissante.
Fortuna a pris le contrôle de Séguéla dans le cadre d’une fusion et acquisition de 844 millions de dollars américains avec Roxgold en 2021. Yaramoko, une mine d’or en production au Burkina Faso, faisait aussi partie du lot.
À l’époque, les activités de Fortuna étaient axées sur l’Amérique latine, et M. Ganoza cherchait une occasion de se développer en Afrique occidentale. « Nous avons suivi le succès de l’équipe de Roxgold depuis ses débuts à Yaramoko en 2015 », se rappelait M. Ganoza. « L’association de nos sociétés a offert à Fortuna une plateforme de croissance continue dans une des régions les plus prolifiques en termes de production aurifère dans le monde. »
Peu après la conclusion de l’acquisition en juillet 2021, Fortuna s’est lancée dans la révision de l’étude de faisabilité d’avril 2021 de Séguéla.
« Il nous a fallu plusieurs mois pour revisiter le plan de construction et les chiffres relatifs au coût d’investissement », expliquait M. Ganoza. « À la suite de cela, nous avons revu notre budget à la hausse, de 148 à 173 millions de dollars américains, pour tenir compte de l’environnement inflationniste. »
Grâce au flux net de trésorerie de quatre mines en exploitation en Argentine, au Burkina Faso, au Mexique et au Pérou, Fortuna était bien placée pour financer le projet.
Séguéla a des ressources et des réserves minérales prouvées et probables de 1,1 million d’onces d’or issues de 12,1 millions de tonnes de minerai d’une teneur de 2,8 grammes par tonne (g/t), selon les données de cinq gisements. Les données actuelles prévoient une durée de vie de la mine de 8,6 ans, et une production annuelle moyenne de 120 000 onces d’or.
Ce projet, qui a débuté en mars 2021, est rare dans l’industrie. En effet, il sera terminé dans les temps et dans le budget imparti. Fortuna a commencé les grandes excavations en février 2023, et
les activités de mise en service en début avril. La première extraction d’or est prévue pour ce mois de mai, avec une montée en cadence pour atteindre la capacité nominale d’ici août 2023.
Les projets pour la mine à ciel ouvert et l’usine de traitement font écho à d’autres réussites dans la région. « La beauté est dans sa simplicité. Les caractéristiques géologiques sont bien comprises, les teneurs sont excellentes pour une mine à ciel ouvert, et nous disposons d’un circuit de broyage. On compte une trentaine de ces mines dans toute l’Afrique occidentale », déclarait Paul Weedon, premier vice-président de l’exploration à Fortuna. « C’est un processus simple que nous avons pu instaurer relativement rapidement. »
Les cinq gisements seront exploités à l'année longue avec une méthode d’exploitation minière à ciel ouvert classique, à savoir des activités de forage et d’abattage à l’explosif, suivies d’une exploitation par camions et pelles pour déplacer le minerai et les déchets. Des gradins de cinq mètres seront creusés en deux galeries sous forme de passages de 2,5 mètres. L’extraction a déjà commencé à Antenna, le plus grand gisement, et débutera à Koula d’ici la fin de l’année. Pour préserver la stabilité de la production, plusieurs gisements seront exploités simultanément et le minerai sera entreposé. D’autres fosses satellites avanceront par étapes jusqu’à la production, en commençant par les fosses à plus haute teneur.
Le minerai ne sera déplacé que sur 500 mètres, d’Antenna jusqu’à l’usine de traitement, où il sera envoyé dans les concasseurs primaires à mâchoires, puis dans le réservoir intermédiaire et dans le broyeur semi-autogène (broyeur SAG). Tous ces équipements sont fournis par le fabricant Metso Outotec. Le minerai passera ensuite dans un circuit de concentration gravimétrique, un circuit de lixiviation au carbone (CIL, de l’anglais carbon-in-leach), suivi d’une élution du carbone, puis finira dans un circuit de récupération de l’or.
Pour l’électricité, Séguéla s’est reliée à une ligne électrique de 90 kilovolts et a construit une sous-station à côté de l’installation de traitement.
Les résidus seront envoyés dans le centre de stockage d’un versant de vallée formé par deux remblais multizones, construits à l’aide d’une méthode de construction en aval.
D’après M. Ganoza, l’usine est identique à celle de Yaramoko, mais sa capacité de débit est supérieure. Au commencement, l’usine devrait traiter 1,25 million de tonnes par an, et la capacité
au pic de la production (troisième année) devrait être de 1,57 million de tonnes.
L’aspect le plus complexe de l’exploitation était de construire l’usine de traitement dans les temps et en respectant le budget imparti, malgré les difficultés qu’ont posé l’inflation, les perturbations dans la chaîne d’approvisionnement et la flambée des coûts énergétiques. Au plus fort de la construction, environ 1 200 personnes seront employées par le projet.
« Nous avons signé un contrat à prix forfaitaire avec Lycopodium pour la somme de 85 millions de dollars pour la construction de l’usine de traitement », expliquait-il. « Ce contrat était un marché clés en main pour l’usine de traitement, ce qui a permis de réduire les risques de déviation pour nous. »
Le partenariat avec Lycopodium coulait de source pour M. Ganoza. « Ce partenaire a construit 80 à 90 % de toutes les mines de la région au cours des deux dernières décennies », indiquait-il. « Il sait qui est fiable et qui ne l’est pas dans différents domaines, des les travaux mécaniques accélérés et la tuyauterie jusqu’à l’automatisation. »
Fortuna a aussi pallié les risques en attribuant 11 millions de dollars américains aux travaux préliminaires. « Nous avons passé commande pour des lots d’équipements importants, perfectionné des techniques détaillées et terminé la construction du camp, le tout avant de présenter en public la décision concernant la construction », expliquait M. Ganoza. « Au moment de commencer la construction, nous avons pu immédiatement mobiliser la main-d’œuvre au lieu d’attendre cinq mois que le camp soit construit. »
Pour exploiter la mine, Fortuna a fait appel à Mota-Engil, une société portugaise spécialisée dans les études techniques et la construction, la gestion des déchets et la logistique. « Ils ont des racines en Afrique occidentale depuis 40 ans », indiquait M. Ganoza. « Ils ont 5 000 employés en Côte d’Ivoire et s’occupent de la gestion des déchets pour la ville d’Abidjan. »
Au plus fort des activités, M. Ganoza estime que la mine emploiera 600 employés, la plupart des environs. « Nous dépendons d’un petit groupe d’experts expatriés, mais notre maind’œuvre est et continuera d’être majoritairement ivoirienne », ajoutait-il.
Même lorsque la construction battait son plein en 2022 et à la fin des travaux en 2023, Fortuna a continué à forer sur sa propriété de 62 000 hectares.
« À une époque où de nombreuses sociétés ralentissent leurs activités d’exploration, nous sommes restés dans une stratégie offensive », indiquait M. Ganoza. La société a prévu un budget de 12 millions de dollars américains en 2022, et 9 millions supplémentaires pour 2023. À la mi-mars, la société avait foré près de la moitié de son programme de 9 500 mètres.
À ce jour, ses efforts ont porté leurs fruits. Fortuna procède actuellement à un forage intercalaire dans un sixième gisement, Sunbird. En décembre 2022, la société communiquait les premières ressources indiquées de Sunbird, qui étaient de 279 000 onces d’or à partir de 3,2 millions de tonnes, d’une teneur de 2,66 g/t. La révision des ressources présumées annonçait quant à elle 506 000 onces d’or à partir de 4,2 millions de tonnes, d’une teneur de 3,73 g/t. Fortuna prévoit d’ajouter le gisement à la réserve du projet d’ici la fin de l’année.
D’après M. Weedon, la géologie du terrain de Séguéla est typique de la région. Le projet est situé dans la ceinture de roches
vertes birimienne d’Afrique de l’Ouest, qui couvre le Ghana, la Côte d’Ivoire, la République de Guinée, le Mali et le Burkina Faso. Les gisements de Séguéla sont des systèmes filoniens orogéniques.
« À Séguéla, la minéralisation contient du quartz et du carbonate. Nous avons beaucoup d’or à l’état natif. Ainsi, nous enregistrons l’or visible comme l’un de nos codes lors de la diagraphie des carottes de forage », décrivait-il.
M. Weedon travaille sur ce projet depuis qu’il a été racheté par Roxgold à Newcrest Mining en 2019. « Lorsque nous avons acheté ce projet, il avait environ 400 000 onces et une troisième ressource », se rappelait-il. « Aujourd’hui, nos ressources approchent les deux millions d’onces. Nous avons mené de nombreuses études géophysiques, une vaste campagne de cartographie, des études supplémentaires sur la géochimie du sol et une grande quantité de forage supplémentaire. Et nous continuons toujours aujourd’hui. »
Outre Sunbird, l’équipe de Weedon a identifié quatre cibles prometteuses sur lesquelles la société se concentrera cette année. L’exploration se poursuivra également à des profondeurs supérieures d’ici la fin de l’année 2023 et courant 2024.
D’après M. Weedon, les gisements orogéniques ont tendance à être profonds, et ont donc un grand potentiel souterrain. « Certains des plus grands gisements d’Afrique occidentale ont une profondeur de plus de deux kilomètres », indiquait-il. « Notre forage le plus profond est d’environ 550 mètres verticaux. Nous ne nous sommes pas encore penchés dessus, car nous avons été trop occupés par le forage pour l’exploitation à ciel ouvert. Nous sommes encore loin d’avoir libéré tout le potentiel de Séguéla. »
Fortuna élargit aussi ses horizons d’exploration. « Nous avons des programmes d’exploration en cours dans d’autres propriétés en Côte d’Ivoire, et nous cherchons à étendre notre portée davantage. Nous évaluons également les possibilités dans les pays voisins pour voir si nous pouvons développer nos activités », concluait M. Weedon. ICM
Mine d’or de Séguéla
Lieu
Durée de vie de la mine
19 kilomètres au nord-ouest de Séguéla, en Côte d’Ivoire
8,6 ans
Effectif 600 employés au pic des activités
Taux de rentabilité interne 53 %* (49 % après (TRI) déduction des impôts)
Coûts nécessaires au maintien 832 dollars américains de la production par once*
Dépenses d’investissement 173 millions de du projet dollars américains
Capacité nominale
3 750 tonnes/jour
Teneur de tête (durée de vie 2,8 g/t* de la mine)
Taux de récupération 94,5 %*
Méthode d’exploitation Camion et pelle/ minière principale chargeuse
*Estimations Source: Fortuna Silver Mines
From the beginning, publications were a cornerstone of CIM. With the consolidation of provincial associations into a national body in 1898, the aim was “to promote the Arts and Sciences connected with the economical production of valuable minerals and metals by means of meetings for the reading and discussion of technical papers and the subsequent distribution of such information through the medium of publica-
The first issue of CIM Bulletin was published in 1908. CIM members were invited to submit items that served the interests of CIM peers and the Institute. The publication proved so successful that by 1914, it went from a quarterly publication to a monthly one. To help defray publishing costs, advertisements were accepted. Submissions quickly outpaced available space in the publication.
During the Second World War, CIM members enlisted in the armed services were exempted from paying membership dues. Enlisted members would receive the monthly Bulletin provided they submitted a photo of themselves in uniform. After the war, mining boomed. Iron Ore Company of Canada began development of projects in the Labrador Trough.
tions [and through the] establishment [of] a central reference library and a headquarters.” The first library was a room at the Windsor Hotel in Montreal, open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and easily accessible from the train station. Today, any CIM member with an internet connection has access to hundreds of thousands of articles and papers. The enduring vision is to share information and knowledge as efficiently as possible.
A 1924 Bulletin paper explored the latest developments in locating deposits below surface, including “the dip needle” and the “Eötvös Torsion balance.” The author also addressed an anxiety about new tech that never seems to go away: “The economic geologist is far from being supplanted, he is being made more useful by having a new tool put in his hands.”
CIM bylaws related to membership were rewritten to be gender neutral, allowing women to become official members of the Institute. In the columns of the Bulletin, the definition of “ore” was also up for debate as the prevailing standard neglected nonmetallic deposits. The author proposed the “substitution of the phrase ‘one or more valuable constituents’ for the word ‘metal’ in some of the well-known definitions.”
The development of Saskatchewan’s potash deposits helped define the era. In a May 1968 Bulletin, Nelson White, CEO of the company that built the K-1 potash mine, shared with pride and humility that he “headed a project which forecast that a potash mine and refinery could be completed in three years and for a cost of $17 million. As many of you know, it took five years and cost $50 million.”
Inspired by soaring gold prices, R.C. Beard of Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources made the case in 1983 that, though heap leaching operations in Nevada were at a much larger scale, applying the practice to heaps of Ontario ore would have the benefit of higher grades. The colder climate and limited leaching season “could well turn out to be the controlling factor as to the economic viability of the process in Canada.”
The 2001 volume of CIM Bulletin was, for the first time, made available to be downloaded as a PDF. The most dramatic shift, however, was the retirement of the Bulletin itself. In February of 2006, the publication was rebranded CIM Magazine Technical papers, which were a staple of the Bulletin, were made available online and the new title shifted its focus to news, columns and feature stories about developments in the industry.
Writing during the 1973 oil crisis, Jerry Whiting of the Bank of Montreal noted, “the urgent necessity to systematically develop new energy supplies within Canada and the United States will provide unusual challenges and opportunities for those companies and individuals with mining expertise.” That year, Syncrude began construction on the Mildred Lake oil-sands mine. Five years and $2.3 billion later, it went into production.
Diamonds were discovered in the Northwest Territories and shortly after that, nickel at Voisey’s Bay in Labrador, which challenged the received wisdom on the formation of nickel deposits. Derek Wilton of Memorial University noted in the February 1996 issue of the Bulletin, “Prior to Voisey’s Bay discovery, the anorthosite complexes and associated ultramafic rocks in Labrador were thought to have economic interests solely as a source of dimension stone.”
To satisfy the appetite for peer-reviewed technical papers, the quarterly CIM Journal was launched in 2010. CIM Magazine continued to evolve with the streamlining of content and beefing up of the editorial process. In 2017, CIM Magazine was relaunched online to be compatible with mobile devices. The new site also marked the shift to publishing stories online first to keep up with the news cycle.
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