https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Rock Tech LIthium inks MOU with the Veldmans and Red Rock Indian Band
Rock Tech Lithium is eyeing the site of the former Norampac Paper mill site in Red Rock as a potential site for a lithium refinery.
The future mine developer and processor has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the brownfield property owners, BMI Group, and its partners, the Red Rock Indian Band to conduct an assessment for a 50-acre development footprint.
https://northernontario.ctvnews.ca/
Glencore’s Nickel Rim South Mine is winding down operations with an eye on closing in 2024. Vice-president Peter Xavier said the mine has been important to the company since its inception in 2010.
He said exploration extended the mine’s lifespan from 2021 to 2024, but Glencore has been planning its closure for some time. This will create an opportunity to partner with the city’s other mining giant, Vale.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/
Glencore says feasibility study looking at partnership with Vale is about to begin and will go into next year
It has been a good run at Glencore’s Nickel Rim South mine in Sudbury, but for the time being, mining there is coming to an end. The vice-president of Sudbury operations, Peter Xavier, says the 15-year-old mine will transition to what it calls “care and maintenance” by next spring.
But there is more mining to be done in that area, and the next steps in a potential joint venture with Vale are under the magnifying glass. Xavier explains there’s a portion of the ore body where the property boundaries shared by the two companies intersect, but is difficult for each company to mine separately.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Ottawa is finally getting ready to accept applications for a $1.5-billion infrastructure fund to support critical minerals mines, with stakeholders in Ontario’s Ring of Fire hoping they will be among the recipients.
Natural Resources Canada announced Tuesday that projects eligible to apply for the new Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund include clean energy and transportation projects that support critical minerals mines. Eligible recipients include the private sector, the provinces and territories, and Indigenous groups.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Overreaching, unconstitutional Impact Assessment Act has Ontario on the offensive to expedite project approvals
Quiet quitting became a cultural buzzword during the pandemic for workplace passivity and resignation. That lethargy now extends to investment in Canada’s natural resources sectors too, said Heather Exner-Pirot.
The mere mention of the federal Impact Assessment Act (IAA) to U.S. firms with Canadian projects can trigger mocking comments like the “Don’t Invest in Canada Act” and “banana republic,” said Exner-Pirot, director of natural resources, energy and environment with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a national public policy think tank.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
North Shore Municipality, First Nation plan and build for an influx of workers and families
While investors and residents await the verdict on Generation Mining’s closure plan for their proposed site outside of Marathon, the township along with Biitigong Nishnaabeg First Nation are pushing through for an increase in housing and enhanced infrastructure in anticipation of a population boom.
The real concern is the sheer number of labourers and transient workers that will soon be moving to the area, including a 1,000-person camp that will be situated on a private property between Marathon and Biitigong Nishnaabeg.
Dr Andrew P Dean, Vice-President of Research and Innovation at Lakehead University, discusses the future of sustainable critical mineral exploration and development in Northern Ontario.
Canada is a world leader in critical mineral exploration and mining technology. Northern Ontario, in particular, has long been viewed as one of the country’s major centres for mining activities.
However, there are challenges facing our region and the industry in general. Expenditures for critical mineral exploration are increasing, but discoveries of new mineral resources are in decline. Companies, governments and communities are tasked with finding ways to undertake sustainable economic development while also ensuring environmental protection and respect for constitutionally protected Indigenous and Treaty rights.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
The federal government’s plan to continue to regulate major resource projects despite a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that says those powers are largely unconstitutional is creating confusion and uncertainty in Ontario’s Ring of Fire. A significant Indigenous stakeholder is making a plea for regulatory certainty, while a major mining company is warning that Canada’s weak standing on the global critical-minerals stage will only get worse.
The Supreme Court said earlier this month that the federal government’s broad-based environmental reviews around large mines and major infrastructure associated with those mines are unconstitutional. Ottawa must limit its oversight to certain defined areas clearly defined in the Constitution, the court said, such as fisheries, the bird population, species at risk and certain Indigenous rights.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/
Workers will be transferred to other Glencore operations in the city
The last scoop load of nickel/copper ore is expected to be hoisted to the surface at Nickel Rim South Mine sometime in late March as the mine goes into care and maintenance mode. By then, most of the Skead-area mine’s employees will have been reassigned to other Glencore Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations (Sudbury INO), such as the Craig/Onaping Depth Project.
As of his week, the mine was down to 250 employees as the process has already started. “(The mining) coming to an end,” said Gary Potts, director of Nickel Rim South, during an interview at a community open house on Thursday at the Skead Recreation Centre. “It’s gone three years longer than originally forecast.”
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Island Gold expansion will allow for an increase in production
The hoist is complete, the headframe is near completion, and the sinking of a new shaft at the Island Gold Mine, outside Dubreuilville, begins at year’s end. In delivering its third-quarter results, Alamos Gold updated progress on the third phase of expansion of the high-grade underground operation ,which will double production once construction is finished in 2026.
The infrastructure being installed also includes a paste plant and a processing mill expansion to support boosting the mining rate from 1,200 tonnes per day to 2,400. Instead of trucking ore and waste rock to surface, that material will be skipped through the new shaft infrastructure.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Wahnapitae First Nation lands manager shares expertise during Economic Development Opportunities Forum
When Anthony Laforge had his first dealings with a resource extraction company, it was a crash course in how not to do consultation. The company had submitted its closure plan for a graphite mining operation in the town of Kearney and, as the lands manager for neighbouring Magnetawan First Nation, it was Laforge’s job to review it.
The community was given 30 days to review the plan. But by the time Laforge saw it for the first time, it had already been sitting on the chief’s desk for five days, he recalled. That left Laforge just 24 days to give his assessment on a file that was essentially new for him.
With the latest expansion under way at Alamos Gold’s Island Gold mine in northern Ontario, which is slated for completion in 2026, its gold production is set to double. “Island Gold is quickly transforming into one of the best assets in all of Canada,” said Greg Fisher, chief financial officer at Alamos Gold. “I would argue it’s probably the best asset that’s not currently owned by a major mining company.”
The mine is located near Dubreuilville, within the historic gold producing area of the Michipicoten greenstone belt of the Archean Superior Province; Argonaut Gold’s Magino mine and Wesdome Gold Mines’ Eagle River complex are nearby.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/
‘I am really quite amazed by what has happened when you spread some limestone’
Growing up in Sudbury many of us — as teens — roamed across a countryside made barren, blackened and rocky due to years of mining and smelting operations. The more recent generations, however, would have to go looking for examples that remain of that time.Revegetation programs have residents and visitors once again seeing a rolling verdant landscape.
“I am really quite amazed by what has happened when you spread some limestone,” said Peter Beckett, Laurentian University professor emeritus of reclamation, restoration and wetland ecology, and chair of the VETAC regreening advisory panel. “Like magic. Who would have thought?”
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Attorney General wants a shovel-ready province ‘without delay’ on big infrastructure projects
Last week’s Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling that the federal Impact Assessment Act is unconstitutional should clear a regulatory path toward expediting construction of big infrastructure projects, like the proposed Ring of Fire road network, said Ontario Attorney General Doug Downey in a news release, Oct.24.
In calling the federal act a “duplicative” process, Downey said the Ford government is “taking immediate legal action to bring certainty so that we can get shovels in the ground on infrastructure projects without delay.”
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Côté Gold open pit to start production in early 2024
Toronto’s IAMGOLD said construction progress of its Côté mine project near Gogama is at the 92 per cent mark. In a news release, the company said activity is at a point where construction is largely wrapping up and pre-production teams are moving in to begin commissioning various elements of the open-pit operation.
Côté is expected to start gold production sometime during the first quarter of 2024. Mining is already underway, having started last July. In the course of digging out the pit, 3.7 million tonnes of gold-enriched material has been stockpiled, on track to compile 5 million tonnes by year’s end.
