Tag Archives: Canada

New Gold achieves 15% fuel saving at Rainy River thanks to Cascadia Scientific solution

New Gold has been leveraging Cascadia Scientific’s Terrain solution at its Rainy River operation in gold-silver mine in Ontario, Canada, as part of its plan to optimise operations at the open-pit operations.

In the company’s just released ESG report, New Gold highlighted that the Heat Mapping module of Terrain, designed to avoid excessive fuel burn, improve operator safety, and reduce equipment maintenance costs and greenhouse gas emissions, has proven itself when used on 13 of its haul trucks.

“In August 2022, Rainy River installed the Cascadia heat mapping system in 13 of its haul trucks,” the company said. “This technology, which identifies ‘hot spots’ along the haul route, allows Rainy River to identify the areas of inefficiency and rectify them.”

Between August and December, the program supported an average fuel savings of 15%, equivalent to just over 2.7 million tonnes of CO2e, New Gold said.

Terrain is made up of tools to visualise haul roads to target interventions that reduce fuel use, GHG emissions and accelerated equipment wear. Cascadia Scientific combines high-accuracy fuel consumption data with measurements of road grade, vehicle speed, position, motion and altitude to construct visual representations of haul road networks. This helps the company continuously supports clients in identifying and correcting hot spots to maximise efficient and productive operation, it said.

Eldorado’s Lamaque mine receives first Sandvik TH550B battery-electric truck

Eldorado Gold Quebec, which operates the Lamaque underground mine in Val-d’Or, says it has become the first mining company in Quebec to integrate a Sandvik TH550B battery-electric truck into its fleet.

This truck, with a maximum capacity of 50 t, will play a key role in improving production efficiency, protecting the health and safety of workers, but above all in mitigating our gas emissions, the mining company said.

Back in March, IM reported that Eldorado was expecting to receive its first battery-electric truck in June for use at Lamaque, with the operator confirming a second truck was scheduled to arrive by the end of the year.

The introduction of these electric trucks is part of the strategy of progressive electrification of the equipment fleet at Lamaque, and also supports efforts to electrify transportation in the Sigma-Lamaque underground ramp, the company said. As the first mining company in Canada to adopt this technology, Eldorado Gold Québec has worked closely with Sandvik to develop these trucks.

Sylvain Lehoux, Vice-President, Canada, said: “We are pleased to be able to begin the electrification of our underground operations thanks to the arrival of this electric truck, which will bring us several benefits, particularly in terms of mitigating our GHG emissions, but also for improving certain aspects of the health and safety of our employees. Over the next few weeks, our employees will be trained and this equipment will be in the testing phase in our operations. We are all looking forward to seeing this technology in action and actively pursuing our efforts to decarbonise our operations.”

Although the Lamaque mine is already recognised as one of the lowest GHG-emitting gold mines in the world, thanks in large part to access to hydroelectricity and the implementation of energy efficiency projects, it is expected that the use of these electric trucks will, once fully functional, reduce GHG emissions estimated at 1,700 tCO2 per year, the company says. This reduction is explained by the absence of diesel consumption and the 100% use of renewable electricity supplied by Hydro-Québec.

Foran Mining and Sandvik reveal first battery-electric DD422iE jumbo at CIM 2023

Foran Mining and Sandvik have unveiled the first Sandvik battery-electric jumbo drill, a DD422iE, to be used at its McIlvenna Bay project in Saskatchewan, Canada, at the CIM 2023 conference in Montreal.

The DD422iE is part of a 20-strong battery-electric vehicle fleet for the project and comes with drilling and bolting capabilities.

When Sandvik announced the fleet order with Foran Mining last year – its largest BEV order at the time. It was to include seven Sandvik 18-t-payload LH518B loaders, six Sandvik 50-t-payload TH550B trucks, four Sandvik DD422iE jumbo drill rigs, two Sandvik DL422iE longhole drills and one Sandvik DS412iE mechanical bolter. Delivery of the equipment was scheduled to begin this year and continue into 2025, Sandvik said.

In the post announcing the milestone BEV drill, Foran said: “The innovative electric DD422IE, with drilling & bolting capabilities, reinforces our commitment to delivering carbon-neutral critical mineral production. As a company, we remain dedicated to developing and implementing eco-friendly solutions that will have a lasting positive impact on the environment and the communities we serve.”

The 2022 feasibility study on McIlvenna Bay outlined a 4,200 t/d operation over an 18.4-year mine life, able to produce an average annual production of 33,000 t of copper-equivalent output over the first 15 years of mine life. By individual metal this equates to 17,600 t of copper, 28,900 t of zinc, 20,000 oz of gold and 486,000 oz of silver.

Weir Motion Metrics to expand into new state-of-the-art facility in Vancouver

Weir Motion Metrics recently cut the ribbon on a new state-of-the-art facility in Vancouver, British Columbia, that, the company says, will allow the business to better serve customers and provide employees with an innovative workspace for collaboration and development.

On March 13, Weir Motion Metrics opened the site, which is a combined manufacturing, R&D and demonstration space. At 19,725 sq.ft (1,833 sq.m), the new facility is an exciting next step for Motion Metrics, which was born in a business incubator at the University of British Columbia and has grown to a leader in innovative artificial intelligence (AI) and 3D rugged machine vision technology for miners worldwide. Weir acquired Motion Metrics in late 2021.

Mike Funke, Vice President of Weir ESCO, which oversees Weir Motion Metrics, said: “In recent years, there has beena very strong pull from mining leaders for AI-enabled digital solutions. This space will be the new home for Weir’s global centre of excellence for AI and digital solutions. The grand opening reflects our continued commitment to the Vancouver technology and business communities.”

Miners are increasingly focused on improving the safety, efficiency, productivity and sustainability of their operations. Weir Motion Metrics specialises in developing advanced monitoring solutions designed to attain these critical objectives. The facility will continue to support demand and customer needs for years to come, it said.

The company has recently embarked on an ore characterisation trial at a copper mine, leveraging its AI and 3D rugged machine vision technology alongside spectral sensors.

CIM and Rio Tinto strengthen Canadian technical capability ties with new partnership

The Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM) has announced a new three-year partnership with Rio Tinto, aiming to strengthen technical capabilities and foster a robust, connected and engaged community of professionals in the Canadian minerals, metals and materials industries.

CIM says it has a long history of supporting the professional development of its members and partners, with a focus on creating, curating and delivering relevant, leading-edge knowledge. Through this partnership, CIM and Rio Tinto will work together to expand awareness of the essential contribution mining makes to society and achieve organisational and operational excellence.

Rio Tinto recognises CIM’s important role in facilitating thought leadership and serving as an incubator for innovation and advancement in ESG practices and clean technologies that are instrumental in increasing energy efficiency, CIM says. In fact, the 2023 CIM Convention and Expo – for which Rio Tinto is an Official Convention Sponsor – will act as a platform for discussions on how to build trust and efficient processes to decarbonise the industry, it added.

“We are thrilled to partner with CIM for the next three years,” Nigel Steward, Rio Tinto Chief Scientist, said. “Rio Tinto benefits from one of the largest technology and R&D ecosystems in the industry, with more than 500 employees dedicated to R&D and a strong network of partners. We know that professional associations can play a critical role in supporting our objective of finding better ways to provide the materials the world needs. CIM’s reputation for fostering a connected and engaged community aligns well with our own values of care, courage and curiosity, and we look forward to working together to achieve our common goals.”

This partnership between CIM and Rio Tinto is a mutually beneficial opportunity that will enhance the technical capabilities of Rio Tinto’s professionals while providing opportunities for professional development and networking, according to CIM. CIM members will have access to the expertise and resources of a leading global mining company, and Rio Tinto will benefit from CIM’s leadership in professional and industry development. Together, CIM and Rio Tinto will work towards the common goal of supporting the growth and success of the mining industry in Canada.

CIM CEO, Angela Hamlyn, added: “We are excited to partner with Rio Tinto, a global leader in the mining industry. This partnership will allow us to expand our reach and impact, and provide valuable opportunities for our members to learn from and collaborate with our corporate partners. Together, we will work to support the professional development and success of our members and the continued growth
of the mining industry in Canada.”

The partnership began in January 2023 and will run for three years.

Rio Tinto has several mining and metal operations in Canada, including stakes in the Diavik diamond mine in the Northwest Territories (pictured), the Iron Ore Company of Canada and industrial minerals operations in Quebec.

Gowest engages Dumas for Bradshaw gold deposit restart

Gowest Gold has engaged Dumas Contracting Ltd, part of STRACON SA, in a four-year contract to assist with the restart of operations at the Bradshaw gold deposit, in Timmins, Ontario.

Dumas has already begun moving equipment to the site and is rapidly ramping up the mobilisation process, with both Gowest and Dumas targeting the resumption of underground work in April.

Dumas is a leading, full-service mining contractor specialising in mine construction and development, production mining and engineering. It is the primary contractor working at numerous mines throughout the Americas, including several in northern Ontario, Gowest said.

Currently, Bradshaw contains a NI 43‐101 indicated resource estimated at 2.1 Mt grading 6.19 g/t Au for 422,000 oz of gold, and an inferred resource of 3.6 Mt grading 6.47 g/t Au for 755,000 oz of gold. Further, based on the prefeasibility study produced by Stantec on June 9, 2015, Bradshaw contains probable reserves (using a 3 g/t Au cutoff and a gold price of $1,200/oz) of 1.8 Mt grading 4.82 g/t Au for 277,000 oz of gold.

Dan Gagnon, President and Chief Executive Officer of Gowest, said: “We are extremely pleased to have Dumas, with their extensive experience and focus on safety, as our long-term partner in restarting mining activities at Bradshaw. At the same time, now that we have the significant financial support of several of our major shareholders, we are also quickly advancing on several related fronts. This includes hiring personnel, mobilising equipment, ordering consumables and other preparations to ensure Bradshaw’s success as the next new gold mine in the Timmins camp.”

The first underground work will focus on the development and production of the initial bulk sample area (East Zone), the development of ventilation infrastructure, as well as the development of a ramp to expand and access new ore zones, Gowest says.

The company is also working towards finalising an agreement for milling Bradshaw’s ore, working with several parties to determine the optimal approach for handling the gold concentrate.

Newcrest’s Brucejack mine nears battery-electric truck milestone, establishes BEV loading trial

Having made significant progress on converting its full underground truck fleet to battery-electric operation, Newcrest Mining’s Brucejack gold mine in British Columbia, Canada, is starting the process for its loading equipment.

Brucejack is a high-grade underground gold-silver mine using long-hole stoping and a combination of longitudinal and transverse mining, depending on zone width and orientation. The ore is crushed underground and conveyed to surface where the fully-enclosed mill produces gold-silver dore bars and flotation concentrate.

Despite a stoppage for an extensive safety review in the December quarter – which followed a tragic fatality in October – the mine is expected to produce 320,000-370,000 oz of gold in the year to the end of June 2023.

In the company’s half-year 2023 financial year results, released this week, it confirmed its final Sandvik Z50 50-t payload battery-electric truck was due on site in March. The arrival of this vehicle – the eighth at Brucejack – will complete the full truck fleet at the mine.

Alongside this, the company says it is set to commence a trial with a battery-electric LHD that arrived on site this month.

Newcrest later confirmed to IM that the vehicle in question was a Sandvik LH518B, an 18-t payload machine that features a 600 kW drivetrain to allow for higher acceleration than conventional loaders as well as fast ramp speeds. Courtesy of its space-efficient battery system and driveline, it is the most compact 18-t loader on the market, capable of fitting in a 4.5 x 4.5 m tunnel, the OEM claims.

On the expected benefits of the new BEV truck fleet, Newcrest said it was anticipating improved truck productivity, lower unit costs and the abatement of approximately 65,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions through to 2030.

The project is being partly funded thanks to a C$7.95 million ($5.9 million) investment from the CleanBC Industry Fund.

It is also part of a wider transformation program Newcrest established for the asset following the acquisition of former owner Pretium Resources in 2022.

In addition to the BEV truck and LHD work included in this program, the company is also rolling out the “NewSafe program” to reinforce safety culture, carrying out a debottlenecking study set to investigate a mill capacity increase to 4,500-5,000 t/d, and conducting trials of ore sorting technology to classify and separate mineralised material to deliver more consistent mill feed grades.

Canada Nickel progresses carbon capture and storage test work for Crawford

Canada Nickel Company Inc says the latest test work on material from its Crawford project, in Ontario, Canada, supports the incorporation of carbon capture and storage into the develoment.

The company has devised an In-Process Tailings (IPT) Carbonation process, which, it says, is a novel method for accelerated carbon capture and storage that it believes has transformative potential.

The latest test work conducted at Kingston Process Metallurgy (KPM) confirmed that existing process streams can be used for IPT Carbonation, which the company believes should allow it to be timely and cost effectively engineered and incorporated into the project flowsheet.

Crawford is hosted in ultramafic rock, which naturally absorbs and sequesters CO2, according to the company, with the potential to actively capture and sequester carbon being a key consideration in Canada Nickel’s acquisition of the 42 sq.km of target ultramafic rocks in the Timmins area.

Canada Nickel has developed an active process that uses tailings as generated in the milling process and injects a concentrated source of CO2 for a brief period of time. This process, IPT Carbonation, fixes CO2 geologically while the tailings are still in the processing circuit, rather than after they have been finally deposited.

The company believes that, given its relative simplicity, this process could be scaled up with availability of concentrated (rather than atmospheric) sources of CO2, with the CO2 potentially delivered by downstream processing of Crawford concentrates, a wide range of industrial processing activities, green hydrogen production, or carbon capture facilities.

Canada Nickel said: “The process demonstrates the potential to produce NetZero Nickel™ and NetZero Cobalt™ for the electric vehicle industry, NetZero Iron™ and chromium for the stainless steel industry and generate substantial carbon credits during the process. The company believes that the need for a concentrated source of CO2 for this process and the substantial CO2 capture and storage capacity potential of its ultramafic land position could form the basis for an entire Zero Carbon Industrial Cluster in the Timmins-Cochrane region.”

The latest results from further lab-scale testing at KPM confirmed that a blend of tailings expected to be produced by Crawford and thickened to an expected operating tailings density could be successfully carbonated with the IPT Carbonation process, the company said. This is a significant result to demonstrate the process at higher solids densities as the pulp density and the tailings residence time will be a key driver of the process capital and operating costs, it explained.

The testing also attempted to understand what ultimate carbon capture potential is possible and the test resulted in 37 t of CO2 captured per tonne of nickel – 34 t of that amount was captured within 25 hours. The 37 t figure is believed to represent a potential maximum and there is no certainty that such amount could be achieved in commercial operation, the company said.

As a result of these results, the integrated feasibility study for the project is expected to be delivered in the June quarter of 2023. This delay, the company says, has no impact on the overall timeline to production, with Canada Nickel continuing to target receipt of permits by mid-2025 with construction to follow.

Mark Selby, Chair and CEO of Canada Nickel, said: “We believe the Crawford project has the potential to be a case study in how critical minerals are developed in Ontario and Canada. Crawford is poised to support the energy transition through the large-scale production of critical minerals, including nickel and cobalt, and to become the sole North American producer of chromium, while also supporting the country’s climate objectives through large-scale carbon capture and storage.”

The company believes the successful incorporation of IPT Carbonation could also potentially allow a portion of its project capital expenditures to become eligible for the carbon capture and storage refundable investment tax credits of 37.5% to 60% from 2022-30 and 18.75% to 30% from 2031-40 announced in the 2022 federal budget documents in Canada.

Selby added: “We look forward to continuing our positive momentum in 2023 as we complete this integrated feasibility study for Crawford, continue to successfully advance the Crawford permitting process, work with our recently appointed financial advisors to advance its overall financing package and aggressively advance our recently acquired Texmont property with its potential for near-term production. We are also excited by our successful tests of the regional exploration potential at Reid, Deloro, Sothman and Reaume which, as they are hosted in the same mineralisation as Crawford, offer the same potential for integrated carbon capture and storage – setting the stage for a Zero Carbon Industrial Cluster in the Timmins-Cochrane region.”

BEUMER Group and FAM ‘the right project partner for all challenges’, Hotz says

In June, BEUMER Group completed the acquisition of the FAM Group of Magdeburg, Germany, in the process, increasing its conveyor system and loading technology offering and becoming a significant player in the in-pit crushing and conveying (IPCC) space.

Close to six months after closing, IM put some questions to Stefan Hotz, Director Sales FAM Group, to find out how the integration of the two companies is going and how the transaction should strengthen the enlarged company’s market position in the minerals and mining sectors.

IM: Where – regionally – do you see the most opportunities in the mining sector for the integrated company to gain market share? South America has been a particularly strong market for FAM in the past; do you see this as a big opportunity for the integrated group?

SH: FAM – member of BEUMER Group – is one of the world’s leading full-range suppliers of bulk handling and processing systems. The customers come from more than 80 countries and the solutions are successfully in use everywhere. With BEUMER’s acquisition of the FAM Group, we were able to expand our portfolio to include bulk material handling, crushing technology as well as conveyor technology. Customers receive solutions from a single source with which they can work efficiently. In addition to engineering and project execution competences, FAM also brings the complete value chain, including after-sales service, to the BEUMER Group. This makes us a sought-after partner worldwide.

Of course, South America is a strong market, especially countries with iron ore and copper resources such as Brazil, Chile and Peru. For example, in Peru, the mining companies are transporting iron ore to the stockyards, which are often located at distances of several kilometres from the port. Callao Port, for example, is home to the most modern and largest ship loading terminal in the country. A reliable and safe connection for material transport is required, which at the same time ideally prevents the emission of particles into the atmosphere. Conveyors are the preferred solution here that can be individually adapted to the respective environmental and technical requirements and to the topography, as well as protect the environment from dust emissions.

IM: Are you expecting to increase your manufacturing capacity or acquire new premises to fulfil this demand, or do you have enough capacity to serve these growing markets in the near-to-medium term?

SH: The FAM Group has subsidiaries in Brazil, Chile, China, Canada and India. In addition, there are the numerous subsidiaries and agencies of the BEUMER Group. This means that we are very well positioned worldwide and can optimally serve these growing markets in the short to medium term. In our project business it’s a must to be, on the one hand, close to our customers but, on the other hand, using our global resource network and know-how to balance workloads. But, of course, we expand the network of our subsidiaries if we notice that we cannot serve certain regions with the desired reliability.

IM: Is the company already pursuing mining projects that involve the solutions/expertise of FAM and BEUMER Group? Can you elaborate on what type of projects these are and what solutions they involve (ie overland conveyors, bucketwheel excavators, spreaders, etc)?

SH: Yes, we are already in the process to support our mining clients from one hand, integrating FAM and BEUMER solutions. For example, we are working on one large project for gold extraction, where BEUMER is providing the long-distance overland conveyor and FAM supports the client with spreader technology to dump overburden. We have combined this with an attractive digitalisation and service package to ensure optimisation of the client’s total cost of ownership.

IM: With this transaction the company has effectively become a major player in the IPCC space. Do you see this as a major growth area for BEUMER Group going forward?

SH: In general, with this new setup, we expand our product portfolio and we are significantly strengthening our market position worldwide, especially in the field of large-scale mining equipment. But the most important thing is that we can provide our customers with even more comprehensive support over the whole value chain from pit to port, including digitalisation and service for our projects. Due to our many years of experience, we also support our clients in complex upgrade, lifetime extension and refurbishment jobs for existing machines. This means we avoid interfaces and customers now have only one contact.

IM: Do you see your ability to offer not only the solutions but also the engineering and design expertise underpinning these solutions as differentiating your offering from your competitors in the IPCC market? What other differentiators will serve you well in winning business in this market?

SH: I don’t want to say much about our market competitors, but I am sure that together with FAM we stand out positively from the market, specifically for continuous soft rock and overburden IPCC applications. Furthermore, we have long-term partners with whom we are serving the needs of our clients in terms of mine planning and pre-engineering. This ensures that we are defining  a solution for the client with a focus on CAPEX and OPEX optimisation. Specifically for IPCC applications, we are convinced of adding value during the first months of operation by providing integrated training and service packages to ensure successful implementation of continuous mining systems after commissioning. In doing so, the specialism is characterised in particular by distinctive engineering at a high level.

IM: What other areas of your business do you see growing with the need for mining companies to move away from their reliance on diesel-powered mobile mining equipment for material transport? Are you seeing more interest in your overland conveyor portfolio, for instance?

SH: Our belt conveyor systems are used successfully all over the world. They solve complex transport problems for any bulk material and are suitable in many cases as an economic alternative to truck transport. While the basic task – to transport bulk materials from the mine to the final discharge point – appears very comparable, no two systems are alike. The range of potential materials to be conveyed, alone, requires individual consideration of the components to be used in terms of wear resistance or the maximum permissible gradients of a conveyor. In addition, above all, the mass flow to be transported and the height to be overcome determine the dimensioning of the drive unit of an overland conveyor. Plants at high altitudes pose a further challenge. At altitudes above 4,000 m, as is often the case in the Andes for example, it must be taken into account that the air pressure and, thus, the density of the air decreases with increasing altitude. This reduces both the cooling effect and the insulating capacity of the air. We are the right project partner for all these challenges.

Taseko Mines using innovation to increase production and efficiencies

The Taseko Mines story is indicative of the current environment miners find themselves in – maximise productivity to grow margins at existing operations or invest in innovative new methods of extracting critical metals that come with a reduced footprint.

The Vancouver-based company is pursuing both options at the two main assets on its books – the Gibraltar copper mine in British Columbia, Canada, and its Florence Copper project in Arizona, USA.

Gibraltar, owned 75% by Taseko, initially started up in 1972 as a 36,000 t/d operation. It was shut down in 1998 due to low copper prices before Taseko restarted it in 2004. In the years since, the company has invested over $800 million in the mine, increasing the throughput rate to 85,000 tons per day (77,111 t/d), where it’s been operating at since 2014.

The asset now sits as the second largest open-pit copper mine in Canada – with life of mine average annual production of 130 MIb (59,000 t) of copper and 2.5 MIb of molybdenum.

Stuart McDonald, President and CEO of the company, says the company continues to work on the trade-off of upping throughput – potentially past the nameplate capacity – and improving metallurgical recoveries at the operation.

This became apparent in the latest quarterly results, when Taseko reported an average daily throughput of 89,400 tons/d over the three-month period alongside “higher than normal” mining dilution.

The company believes Gibraltar can improve on both counts – mill throughput and mining dilution.

“We were optimistic coming into the new pit (Gibraltar Pit) that, based on the historical data, we could go above 85,000 tons/d as we got settled in and mined the softer ore,” McDonald told IM. “We still believe there are opportunities to go beyond that level, but, at some point, it becomes an optimisation and trade-off between throughput and recoveries.

“In our business, we’re not interested in maximising mill throughput; we’re interested in maximising copper production.”

On the dilution front, McDonald believes the problem will lessen as the mining moves to deeper benches in the Gibraltar Pit.

“As we go deeper, the ore continuity improves, so we hope the dilution effect will continue to improve too,” he said.

“The dilution rate is still not quite where we want it to be, so it’s a matter of looking at our operating practices carefully and following through a grade reconciliation process from our geological model through to assays from our blast holes, assays into the shovel bucket and all the way through to the mill.”

‘Assays into the shovel bucket’?

McDonald explained: “We do use ShovelSense® technology on two of our shovels, so that helps us assess the grade of the material in the shovel bucket.”

To this point, the company has leveraged most value from this XRF-based technology, developed by MineSense, when deployed on shovels situated in the boundaries between ore and waste. This offers the potential to reclassify material deemed to be ‘waste’ in the block model as ‘ore’ and vice versa, improving the grade of the material going to the mill and reducing processing of waste.

ShovelSense has been successful in carrying out this process with accuracy at other copper mines in British Columbia, including Teck Resources’ Highland Valley Copper operations and Copper Mountain Mining’s namesake operation.

McDonald concluded on this grade reconciliation process: “We just have to make sure we are tracing the material through all of those steps and not losing anything along the way. Gibraltar is a big earthmoving operation, so we must continue to keep the material flowing as well as look at the head grade.”

A different type of recovery

In Arizona at Florence Copper, Taseko has a different proposition on its hands.

Florence is a project that, when fully ramped up, could produce 40,000 t of high-quality copper cathode annually for the US domestic market.

It will do this by using a metal extraction and recovery method rarely seen in the copper space – in-situ recovery (ISR).

The planned ISR facility consists of an array of injection and recovery wells that will be used to inject a weak acid solution (raffinate – 99.5% water, 0.5% acid) into copper oxide ore and recover the copper-laden solution (pregnant leach solution) for processing into pure copper cathode sheets. The mine design is based on the use of five spot well patterns, with each pattern consisting of four extraction wells in a 100 ft (30.5 m) grid plus a central injection well. This mine outline and associated infrastructure comes with a modest capital expenditure figure of $230 million.

The company has been testing the ISR technology at Florence to ensure the recovery process works and the integrity of the wells remains intact.

Since acquiring Florence Copper in November 2014, Taseko has advanced the project through the permitting, construction and operating phase of the Phase 1 Production Test Facility (PTF). The PTF, a $25 million test facility, consists of 24 wells and the SX/EW plant. It commenced operations in December 2018.

Over the course of 18 months, Taseko evaluated the operational data, confirmed project economics and demonstrated the ability to produce high-quality copper cathode with stringent environmental guidelines at the PTF, the company says.

McDonald reflected: “We produced over 1 MIb [of copper] over this timeframe and then switched over from a copper production cycle into testing our ability to rinse the orebody and restore the mining area back to the permitted conditions.

“We’re proving our ability to do the mining and the reclamation, which we think is a critical de-risking step for the project.”

Over an 18-month period, Taseko produced 1 MIb from the ISR test facility at Florence

Taseko says Florence Copper is expected to have the lowest energy and greenhouse gas-intensity (GHG) of any copper producer in North America, with McDonald saying the operation’s carbon footprint will mostly be tied to the electricity consumption required.

“Our base case is to use electricity from the Arizona grid, which has a combination of renewables, nuclear and gas-fired power plants,” he said. “In the longer-term, there are opportunities at Florence to switch to completely 100% renewable sources, with the most likely candidate being solar power.

“At that point, with renewable energy powering our plant, we could be producing a copper product with close to zero carbon associated with it.”

Gibraltar has also been labelled as a “low carbon intensity operation” by Skarn Associates who, in a 2020 report, said the operation ranked in the lowest quartile compared with other copper mines throughout the world when it comes to Scope 1 and 2 emissions.

When it comes to the question of when Florence could start producing, Taseko is able to reflect on recent successful permitting activities.

In December 2020, the company received the Aquifer Protection Permit from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, with the only other permit required prior to construction being the Underground Injection Control (UIC) permit from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

On September 29, the EPA concluded its public comment period on the draft UIC it issued following a virtual public hearing that, according to Taseko, demonstrated strong support for the Florence Copper project among local residents, business organisations, community leaders and state-wide organisations. Taseko says it has reviewed all the submitted comments and is confident they will be fully addressed by the EPA during its review, prior to issuing the final UIC permit.

Future improvements

In tandem with its focus on permitting and construction at Florence, and upping performance at Gibraltar, the company has longer-term aims for its operations.

For instance, the inclusion of more renewables to get Florence’s copper production to carbon-neutral status could allow the company to benefit from an expected uptick in demand for a product with such credentials. If the demand side requirements for copper continue to evolve in the expected manner, it is easy to see Taseko receiving a premium for its low- or no-carbon product over the 20-year mine life.

At Gibraltar, it is also pursuing a copper cathode strategy that could lead to the re-start of its SX-EW plant. In the past, this facility processed leachate from oxide waste dumps at the operation.

“As we get into 2024, we see some additional oxide ore coming out of the Connector Pit, which gives us the opportunity to restart that leach operation and have some additional pounds coming out of the mine,” McDonald said.

Alongside this, the company is thinking about leaching other ore types at Gibraltar.

“There are new technologies coming to the market in terms of providing mines with the opportunity to leach sulphides as well as oxides,” McDonald said. “We’re in the early stages of that work, but we have lots of waste rock at the property and, if there is a potential revenue stream for it, we will look at leveraging that.”