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New Brunswick/Bathurst Zinc Mining Camp

Old mining camp mineral-rich, but ‘we need an operator’ – by John Chilibeck (Hamilton Spectator/Daily Gleaner – October 23, 2023)

https://www.thespec.com/

New Brunswick politicians are not getting all that excited about a new drilling and exploration program in the Bathurst area, despite the hint it could one day become a mining powerhouse again.

New Brunswick politicians are not getting all that excited about a new drilling and exploration program in the Bathurst area, despite the hint it could one day become a mining powerhouse again.

On Monday, Canadian Metals Inc. announced exploration plans on multiple properties near the old Bathurst Mining Camp where zinc, copper and lead were mined for more than a half century up until 2013. The historical operations enriched Bathurst and created scores of jobs.

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Remaining staff to be terminated as receivership approved for Caribou mine – by Shane Magee (CBC News New Brunswick – January 10, 2023)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/

A British Columbia judge approved an order Monday to place Trevali Mining (New Brunswick) Ltd. in receivership later this month, resulting in the termination of remaining Caribou mine employees.

Supreme Court Justice Shelley Fitzpatrick granted the order after a hearing in Vancouver on Monday. The company will be placed in receivership at 11:59 p.m. PT on Jan. 24. Receivership allows secured creditors to recover what they’re owed when a company defaults on its payments.

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Owner of Caribou Mine near Bathurst granted creditor protection (CBC New Brunswick – August 22, 2022)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/

Trevali Mining says there’s no timeline for a potential restart of operations

The news just keeps getting worse for the Caribou Mine near Bathurst. After suspending operations last week, Trevali Mining Corp. has been granted creditor protection by the British Columbia Supreme Court on Friday.

On Monday, the company announced that trading of its shares had been halted on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Trading is also expected to be halted on three other exchanges as well.

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New Brunswick: Caribou Mine near Bathurst stops all production (CBC News New Brunswick – August 17, 2022)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/

Mayor says news of layoffs is ‘disheartening’

The owner of the Caribou Mine in northern New Brunswick has suspended the extraction of all minerals at the site while it reviews its operations. Trevali Mining Corp. announced Tuesday it would explore all options for the future of the mine near Bathurst after reporting low productivity rates and a steep drop in revenue.

In an email Wednesday, Jason Mercier, Trevali’s director of investor relations, confirmed the decision to halt production. The news comes after the Vancouver-based company released its second-quarter financial results, which showed it recorded a 44 per cent decrease in revenue compared to the previous quarter.

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Hitting the reset button: Trevali restarted the shuttered Caribou mine with a new lease on life – by Kylie Williams (CIM Magazine – June 17, 2021)

https://magazine.cim.org/en/

In mid-November 2020, Marie-Claude Dumont, senior operations manager at Trevali Mining’s Caribou zinc-lead-silver mine in northern New Brunswick, “dusted off the life-of-mine plan” for the operation the company had shuttered nine months earlier.

With zinc prices on the rise and a faint light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, Dumont and her team ran the numbers to assess the feasibility of restarting the mine. The models looked good, and with a healthy hedging deal in place, Trevali moved swiftly to announce the restart of the mine on Jan. 15, 2021.

By March 6, the first ore was at the surface and delivered to the stockpile, 20 days shy of a year since Trevali announced the temporary suspension of mine operations.

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EDITORIAL: Alberta gets all the attention. New Brunswick faces its own climate test with Maritime Iron (Globe and Mail – February 10, 2020)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The proposed Frontier oil sands mine in Alberta has attracted a lot of attention in recent weeks, with the Trudeau government appearing to waver on approving a project that has cleared all its regulatory hurdles. That debate encapsulates the strain between a potential economic win and Canada’s climate-change goals.

Frontier, however, is hardly alone among the difficult industrial-development questions facing the country.

New Brunswick is wrestling with its own Frontier-like challenge. In mid-January, a small Toronto company called Maritime Iron filed its plans to the provincial government for an environmental review. The company wants to build a facility to turn iron ore into pig iron, a product used in steelmaking. The site is beside a coal-power plant in rural New Brunswick near Bathurst.

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Glencore Canada to shut Brunswick smelter, union laments ‘devasting blow’ (MiningWeekly.com – November 13, 2019)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

The Canadian unit of global mining and commodities trader Glencore on Wednesday announced the permanent closure of the Brunswick lead smelter, which it said had become uneconomic after the closure of the Brunswick mine in 2013.

The company said that the decommissioning process would begin immediately and the smelter, in Belledune, would cease all operations by the end of the year, affecting more than 400 workers.

Glencore head of zinc and lead assets, Chris Eskdale said in a news release that the decision to cease lead smelting operations was a “very difficult one”.

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New Brunswick: Rare mineral discovered near Nepisiguit Falls (CBC News New Brunswick – October 20, 2019)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/

Melanterite is rare to New Brunswick and dissolves in water

A Bathurst man who collects minerals as a hobby stumbled across a rare substance that has never been recorded in the New Brunswick Museum’s archives.

Jesse Chamberlain went to a former mining site near Nepisiguit Falls in May to dig for minerals with his girlfriend. After digging about two feet deep into the side of the hill with a small gardening tool, Chamberlain stumbled across a blue-green mineral called melanterite.

“It was the first time I ever seen that colour come out of the ground,” Chamberlain said. “I was very surprised, so I called my girlfriend over to take a look at it. We weren’t sure what it was, so we collected as many samples as we could.”

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[Trevali Mining] CEO bullish on buoying miner as zinc sinks – by Nelson Bennett (Business In Vancouver – September 18, 2019)

https://biv.com/

The stock market has not been kind of late to Trevali Mining Corp. (TSX:TV). The Vancouver-based zinc miner has doubled in size since acquiring two zinc mines from Glencore Plc in 2017, bumping it to mid-tier miner status, with a global head count of about 2,000.

It now has four operating zinc mines – one in New Brunswick, one in Peru and two in Africa (Namibia and Burkina Faso). Normally, that kind of production growth would be a good reason to hold onto a mining stock. But the company’s share price has recently fallen to below $0.20 from $1.68 at the end of January 2018.

Trevali is not the only zinc miner to experience a stock market pummelling. Glencore PLC (LON:GLEN), one of the world’s largest zinc producers, has suffered a 45% decline in share value since January 2018.

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New Brunswick: Latest Sisson Mine approval leaves First Nations, conservation groups uneasy – by Logan Perley (CBC News New Brunswick – July 22, 2019)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/

Tailings pond for proposed mine north of Fredericton requires damming two fish-bearing brooks

For two years, Nick Polchies of Woodstock First Nation and his dog Arizona have been waking up in the woods, on land that someday — and for centuries to come — could be a toxic tailings pond.

Polchies initially went to the site, about 80 kilometres northwest of Fredericton, to help the Wolastoqi grandmothers already camping out there to protest the proposed Sisson Mine.

Northcliff Resources Ltd., a Vancouver-based company, says its open-pit tungsten and molybdenum mine would create 500 jobs during construction and 300 jobs for the 27 years it is expected to operate.

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Port of Saint John becomes exporter of potash despite Sussex mine shutdown (CTV Atlantic – June 11, 2019)

https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/

Pipelines have been controversial, but the so-called potash pipeline between Saskatchewan and Saint John has been a surprise success story even after our region’s only potash mine ceased production.

When potash mining abruptly came to an end three years ago in the Sussex area, the next domino that was expected to fall was the potash export terminal at the port of Saint John.

“In the worst-case scenario, we saw the potash terminal being mothballed, said Pat Riley of the International Longshoreman’s Association. “Without potash it just does not work.” But it is working, with potash mined in Saskatchewan and shipped by rail to New Brunswick.

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No end in sight for Brunswick Smelter strike – by Tori Weldon (CBC News New Brunswick – May 23, 2019)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/

It’s been one month since unionized employees at Brunswick Smelter started striking, and both sides of the contract dispute say they’re waiting for the other to come back to the table.

On April 24, employees at the Glencore Canada-owned smelter were sent home — with pay — hours before the strike was set to begin. Because they were paid for their time, both parties agree the union is striking and the contract dispute is not a lockout.

Bart Dempsey, president of local 7085 of the United Steelworkers, said “we haven’t heard anything from the company, but it remains the same. We’re willing to go back to the table if they remove these concessions that we don’t believe they need.”

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Nutrien’s US$1.8B N.B. mine writeoff illustrates dismal state of potash market – by Gabriel Freidman (Financial Post – November 7, 2018)

https://business.financialpost.com/

For nearly three years, the town has been working to absorb the shock of the closure

Saskatoon-based Nutrien Ltd., the largest potash company in the world, announced late Monday evening that it is closing a mine in Sussex, N.B. that cost billions of dollars to construct and that it had barely operated.

Marc Thorne, mayor of Sussex, said that the news arrived quickly. On Monday, the company asked for a meeting on short notice, and told him it planned to close its potash mine and return the site to nature.

“In four or five years, there may not be any indication that the mine was even there,” said Thorne. The situation illustrates the dismal state of the potash market. Nutrien’s predecessor, the Potash Company of Saskatchewan, started building the mine in 2007 and finished eight years later at a cost of US$2.2 billion.

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TRANSFORMATION: Digging out from a mine closure: Sussex gives itself a shake and tries new things – by Connell Smith (CBC News New Brunswick – July 16, 2018)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/

Southern New Brunswick town lost 1,000 jobs almost overnight when PotashCorp pulled out

Uwe Fiehn has a numbers problem. Despite a fairly steady stream of lunch-time customers exclaiming over the pastries and European breads, the owner of the Country Home Bakery knows a lot more people should be stopping in.

“Every day we need 100 to 110 customers, then you have a very good business,” Fiehn said. “If you have 80 customers every day, that’s also perfect. “But we have at the moment just 50 to 55, you know?” Fiehn and his wife, Linda, bought the property in Sussex Corner, outside Sussex, in August 2015.

1,000 jobs gone

Five months later, PotashCorp delivered the shattering news to Sussex and surrounding communities that it was closing its mine in nearby Penobsquis.

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Top 10 zinc miner Trevali lifts 2018 guidance 140% as zinc powers to 10yr high – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – January 16, 2018)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Canadian zinc miner Trevali Mining expects to produce 140% more zinc this year, following a transformational 2017 that saw it produce a record 177.4-million payable pounds of zinc.

The 2017 output was boosted by the December quarter production from the newly acquired Perkoa mine, in Burkina Faso, and the Rosh Pinah mine, in Namibia, which it acquired from Glencore on August 31. Production for the assets from April 1 to August 31, was treated as part of the working capital adjustments captured in the purchase price calculation.

Trevali, which is based in Vancouver, on Monday reported record unverified fourth-quarter production of 104.8-million payable pounds of zinc, 13.5-million payable pounds of lead and 396 899 oz of payable silver. Preliminary 2017 output was reported at 45.8-million pounds of lead and 1.6-million ounces of payable silver.

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