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NOVEMBER 11–24, 2019 / VOL. 105 ISSUE 23 / GLOBAL MINING NEWS · SINCE 1915 / $3.99 / WWW.NORTHERNMINER.COM
Fireside chat with Kirkland Lake Gold’s Tony Makuch PROGRESSIVE MINE FORUM
| Head of rising miner on innovation, gold, the road ahead BY NORTHERN MINER STAFF
T
he Northern Miner hosted its third annual Progressive Mine Forum in October. During the event, Tony Makuch, president and CEO of Kirkland Lake Gold (TSX: KL; NYSE: KL), sat down with Northern Miner publisher Anthony Vaccaro for an in-depth fireside chat in front of an audience at the MaRS Discovery District in downtown Toronto. The following is an edited transcript of the discussion. To see videos from the event, visit www.northernminer.com.
Anthony Vaccaro: Kirkland Lake Gold’s Macassa mine has a fully electric fleet and was first to use electric 40-tonne underground haul trucks. Can you take us back to when you decided to take the company down this road? Tony Makuch: Macassa was operated with battery-powered equipment, battery-powered locomotives and air-operated machines for the first 65 years of mining. Now, I had worked at Macassa before, but coming back to the mine in 2016, it
Protesters in Santiago, Chile, in October 2019. CARLOS FIGUEROA/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Chile in turmoil as tensions boil over
See MAKUCH / 14
UNREST
| Traditionally stable nation faces uncertainty
BY TOM AZZOPARDI
T Kirkland Lake Gold CEO at The Northern Miner’s third annual Progressive Mine Forum in October 2019. GEORGE MATTHEW PHOTOGRAPHY
Special to The Northern Miner
he worst unrest in Chile in a generation threatens to overturn assumptions about one of South America’s most stable countries and the world’s leading copper producer. All it took was a US4¢ rise in the peak hour fares on the Santiago metro on Oct. 6. But by Oct. 18, a week of mass fare-jumping by high school and university students had descended into widespread vandalism and pitched battles with riot police. The scenes were apocalyptic, with
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dozens of metro stations and buses set alight, mobs looting supermarkets, and the headquarters of the country’s largest electricity company in flames. With police apparently overwhelmed, Chile’s centre-right president Sebastian Pinera decreed a state of emergency, imposing a curfew and sending troops into Santiago for the first time since its return to democracy in 1990. By then, however, it was too late. Tens of thousands of Chileans had taken to the streets, banging saucepans (a traditional form of demonstration in South America) in protest over the heavy-handed clampdown and a growing list of complaints, from low pensions and rising living costs to the poor state of public hospitals and schools. While the looting has subsided and the soldiers sent back to barracks, protests and clashes with police have continued almost daily. In almost two weeks of chaos, more than 20 people have died, hundreds more injured (many blinded by rubber bullets) and thousands arrested. The disruption has been huge, especially in Santiago. The Santiago Chamber of Commerce estimates that the unrest has cost businesses in the city US$1.4 billion in vandalism and lost sales. Restoring the metro’s system is likely to take several months and cost more than US$300 million. Chileans and foreigners alike are shocked at how quickly South America’s wealthiest and most stable
economy has been turned upside down. Copper prices rose to their highest level in three months on fears that the unrest could hit copper supplies. However, so far, the impact on the See CHILE / 2 PM40069240
VICTORIA GOLD: EAGLE NEARS PRODUCTION IN YUKON / 8
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