Project still waiting for full funding from KGHM
It’s still “full speed ahead” for KGHM’s Victoria Mine project in Sudbury, said a senior manager with the company in Sudbury.
Trevor Eagles, KGHM’s manager of engineering in Sudbury, said the project is finalizing a feasibility study, and is on schedule to complete a mining shaft by 2019.
In 2014 KGHM completed timbering at the site, located about two kilometres south of the historic Victoria Mine, which was first developed in the 1890s and then closed in the 1920s.
The former Inco reopened the mine in the 1970s, and made a deal with KGHM’s predecessor, FNX, in 2002, to take control. A long and thin ore body – about 50 kilometres long – was discovered in 2010, which the company now wants to bring into production.
KGHM estimates the new mine site contains 14.2 million tonnes of resources. The inferred resources include 700 million pounds of copper, 700 million pounds of Nickel and 3.5 million ounces of platinum group elements. “Everybody working on the project is fully confident we have a world-class ore deposit and a very strong business case,” said Eagles.
KGHM’s original plan was to sink two mine shafts at the site – an initial exploration shaft, and a second larger shaft for production – but in the last six to eight months, the company decided instead to go with one larger mine shaft.
Eagles said the single large mine shaft would be cheaper to build, and would get production done earlier.
In a presentation to the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce in May 2014, Mark Frayne, KGHM’s manager of project controls for the Victoria Mine, said the first mine shaft – still planned at the time – was due to be completed by 2017, and the second production shaft would be done by 2019.
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