Glencore's future in Sudbury means going deeper
With reserves dwindling at its existing operations, Glencore
has staked $1.3 billion on a new mine that will reach more than two kilometres
— picture four CN Towers — below the surface.
“We’ve been mining around Sudbury for a long time now,”
vice-president Peter Xavier told a Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce audience
Thursday, as keynote speaker for the group’s AGM. “That means a lot of
near-to-surface, easy-to-find deposits are long gone, so the future is very
much at depth.”
The deeper ore will fetch the same market price as its
near-surface equivalent, he noted, yet is much more costly to access.
“So the way we combat that is to innovate,” he said. “We
have to adapt to make that reality possible or we won’t have a business going
forward.”
Glencore is now about midway through construction of its
Onaping Depth project, which will use an all-electric fleet to collect ore
located some 2.5 km below the old Craig Mine.
“One of the unique aspects of Onaping Depth is that it’s
going to be 100 per cent battery-equipment driven, from shaft to depth, and
that’s a key enabler to the mine becoming economic,” Xavier said.
The VP said there are “huge benefits to not using diesel,”
including better air quality for workers and lower costs for ventilation.
Onaping Depth will also feature mine-wide Wi-Fi, allowing
for “constant, real-time awareness of what is happening,” noted Xavier.
In the past there was a “big divide between the surface and
depths of the mine” in terms of communication, he noted. “It was hard to
understand what was going on and get instructions.”
He used the analogy of a hockey coach trying to direct a
team from the locker room and only learning between periods how the game is
unfolding. “It’s a big difference when you can be on the bench, interacting and
making adjustments.”
Xavier said Glencore’s Nickel Rim South mine is slated to
wind down by 2023 — despite being the company’s newest operation — and its
Fraser Mine by 2025.
“Our current asset base is coming to end of life and Onaping
Depth represents an investment that takes us out into the future,” he said following
the chamber presentation.
The new, extra-deep mine is expected to come online by 2025
— just as Fraser folds its tent — “and take us out to at least 2030, but we
expect very much to extend that.”
Onaping Depth is “utilizing historic Craig Mine infrastructure
to make part of the design, and new infrastructure to access the deeper parts,”
he explained.
The project was launched in 2017 — “we had to go laterally a
couple of kilometres to get to the new shaft location,” noted Xavier — with
construction beginning in earnest in 2018.
“The shaft started around the 1,150 level, and we’re at the
1,915 level currently,” said Xavier. “The bottom is just past 2,300. We’ll
reach that milestone in early 2023, and from that point on we’ll develop off
the shaft to access the ore body and build the remaining infrastructure that
makes the mine.”
The company is moving toward more use of autonomous machines
that can be operated through real-time controls, but people will still be
required at depth.
“Autonomous allows us to conduct continued work between
shifts — drills can keep turning, some of the big haulers can keep moving,”
said Xavier. “But you always need people to monitor, do pre-operational
checks.”
In general, though, the nature of mining work has evolved,
he said, from “handheld and very labour-intensive to nowadays where it’s more computerized,
mechanized, sophisticated equipment. The next shift is to take the person away
from the hazard as much as possible, but also utilize the equipment through as
much of the 24-hour day as possible.”
Glencore currently counts about 1,200 employees. That number
will likely come down with the closure of Nickel Rim South, but grow again once
a joint venture with Vale to extend Nickel Rim gets fully underway.
“We’ll come gradually down from a two-mine operation to one,
for a period of time,” said Xavier. “But the objective with the JV (joint
venture) is to bring on a second operation again.”
He said some employees will also be transitioned to Onaping
Depth as the company begins developing off-shaft in 2023.
While going ever-deeper for ore brings many costs and
challenges, Xavier said Sudbury is lucky in that there is growing demand for
its minerals — which aren’t limited to nickel.
“One of the reasons Sudbury is able to compete at depth is
that we’re blessed with polymetallic ore bodies,” he said. “So not only are we
exploring and mining nickel, but we also have copper, platinum, palladium,
gold, silver and cobalt associated with our production. That’s one of the
enablers and differentiating factors that makes going to depth a possibility.”
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