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We shape and make history every day That’s how we make the big difference, the Metso Way.
This year marks Metso’s 150th anniversary, and we are celebrating by remembering the employees, customers, and technological advancements that helped write our story—including our heritage brands. Today, we continue to serve and supply spare and wear parts for all machines previously sold under our trusted heritage brands, such as Nordberg, Symons, Svedala, Barmac, and Allis Chalmers. Our long-lasting parts are designed to original tolerances to ensure a perfect fit, safe operation, and optimal uptime. Plus, exercising preventative maintenance with Metso and using OEM parts extends the life of your equipment. Discover all of Metso’s heritage brands still served at metso.com/ CrusherSpares. #Metso150
Shaping and making history, together. Metso congratulates CIM on 120 years!
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CANADIAN INSTITUTE OF MINING, METALLURGY AND PETROLEUM
INSTITUT CANADIEN DES MINES, DE LA MÉTALLURGIE ET DU PÉTROLE
Delivering key automation technologies for productivity improvements The journey to success is rarely straight. But with an ally by your side, who understands your past and shares your ambition, the road will be a lot smoother. Collaborating with customers and partners to find new solutions is the way forward. We do that by entering into partnerships that broaden our horizons, inspire us, and lead to the right solutions that can help our customers solve the challenges they face. By capturing data we help our customers diagnose the health
of their equipment, optimise performance and deliver sustainable productivity. Discover how we can help you take productivity improvements to the next level.
flsmidthminerals.com
JUNE/JULY 2018 | JUIN/JUILLET 2018
Celebrating 120 years of CIM CIM was founded on June 18, 1898, so we wanted to do something special this issue. Over the decades CIM has accumulated walls of publications, comprised of transactions, proceedings and special volumes, and of course our flagship publications the CIM Bulletin, CIM Journal and CIM Magazine. To celebrate our history, and the history of the Canadian mining industry, we have highlighted a collection of the grand and curious moments captured in CIM publications over the years. Watch for these special excerpts throughout the issue. For more stories and photos from the past 120 years of the Canadian mining industry, go to 120.cim.org.
46 cover story
Names to Know 2018 CIM Magazine’s annual who’s who of the mining industry By Ryan Bergen, Virginia Heffernan, Cecilia Keating, Kevin Martine, Christopher Pollon and Kylie Williams
56 In deep and on track To access the gold far below the surface at its Goldex mine, Agnico Eagle gave an innovative haulage system the opportunity to prove its worth By Kelsey Rolfe
June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 5
CIM MAGAZINE JUNE/JULY 2018 • JUIN/JUILLET 2018
in each issue
8 10 12
Editor’s letter President’s notes Chatter
tools of the trade
14
The best in new technology Compiled by Jordan Faries
developments
19
Crown corporation to manage the pipeline expansion project until a new investor is found By Kelsey Rolfe
28
Vale to transition Creighton deep zone to all-electric fleet By Kelsey Rolfe
32
30 mining lore
Quebec miner plans allelectric surface mine
82
By Kevin Martine
By Cecilia Keating
we are mining
36
Engineer Theresa Nyabeze takes a do-it-yourself approach to diversity contenu francophone
By Renee Sylvestre-Williams
column
38
How to use drones for reclamation planning By Kelsey Martin
40
64 65 66
67
Teck reuses old tires to build mechanically stabilized earth walls at Highland Valley Copper ArcelorMittal opts for a partial autonomous drilling system at its MontWright mine A double solution to acid mine drainage and wet tailings dam failure By Christopher Pollon
technology
60
Innovations in the monitoring and design of material handling systems By Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco
74
44 preview
77
Notre dossier annuel consacré à la fine fleur de l’industrie minière
Pour accéder à l’or se trouvant sous terre à sa mine Goldex sans dépenser une fortune, Agnico Eagle a donné sa chance à un système de transport innovant Par Kelsey Rolfe
Extraction 2018
obituary
81
Klaus Konigsmann created a legacy built on his operational expertise and support of young engineers By Jan Nesset
6 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
Mot du président
profil de projet
By Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco
44
Lettre de l’éditeur
Par Ryan Bergen, Virginia Heffernan, Cecilia Keating, Kevin Martine, Christopher Pollon et Kylie Williams
By Cecilia Keating
42
Table des matières
article de fond
surface mining
40
The many fraudsters of Kansas’s goldless rush
Nous publions progressivement sur notre site Internet les articles du CIM Magazine en version française.
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CANADIAN INSTITUTE OF MINING, METALLURGY AND PETROLEUM
INSTITUT CANADIEN DES MINES, DE LA MÉTALLURGIE ET DU PÉTROLE
2017 CANADA’S
SAFEST EMPLOYERS
GOLD WINNER
editor’s letter
Grab samples When CIM was founded 120 years ago this June, among the Institute’s chief objectives were: “to promote … the economical production of valuable minerals and metals, by means of meetings for the reading and discussion of technical papers, and the subsequent distribution of such information … through the medium of publications. [And] the establishment of a central reference library and a headquarters for the purposes of this organization.” One of the Institute’s primary services was a reading room where members could consult maps, papers and geological surveys from Canada and beyond. Anyone looking to use the resources could present proof of membership at the Windsor Hotel on Peel Street in Montreal, between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., Monday to Friday. Some of those volumes are still shelved here in our offices. And any curious member would be welcome to come and explore them within those same times if he or she wished. I would be happy to give the tour – though I won’t hold my breath. That one location could serve a country of this size is absurd, and was even more so 120 years ago without the benefits of modern transportation and telecommunications. Then, as now, it was the network of people across Canada who made the Institute what it is. The transcontinental railroad completed the connection, and the coal mined at stops along the way ensured that the messages conveyed along those rails reached the members scattered across the country
Ryan Bergen, Editor-in-chief editor@cim.org @Ryan_CIM_Mag
Editor-in-chief Ryan Bergen, rbergen@cim.org Executive editor Angela Hamlyn, ahamlyn@cim.org Interim managing editor Andrea Nichiporuk, anichiporuk@cim.org Section editors Tom DiNardo, tdinardo@cim.org; Kelsey Rolfe, krolfe@cim.org Web content editor Maria Olaguera, molaguera@cim.org Editorial intern Kevin Martine, kmartine@cim.org Contributors Jordan Faries, Virginia Heffernan, Cecilia Keating, Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco, Kelsey Martin, Jan Nesset, Christopher Pollon, Kate Sheridan, Renee Sylvestre-Williams, Kylie Williams Editorial advisory board Mohammad Babaei Khorzhoughi, Vic Pakalnis, Steve Rusk, Nathan Stubina Translations Karen Rolland and Cision
eth R. Wilson enn Aw 5K
s ard
20 1
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This issue’s cover Image of Kalev Ruberg by Jon Benjamin Photography
eager to read and share the latest intelligence on developments in the industry. The history of CIM has been comprehensively told in Pride and Vision by E. Tina Crossfield, conceived to celebrate CIM’s centennial. John E. Udd’s A Century of Achievement, published in 2000, places CIM within the larger narrative of the development of this country’s minerals industries. But with this anniversary issue, we wanted to share some of the primary documents that constitute the first draft of CIM’s history and how it is woven into that of the country. We have pulled samples from the archives to capture the style, the tone and the concerns of the Institute over time. You will find these salted throughout the issue, and, if you would like to explore more, our 120th anniversary website has a great collection of photographs of people and operations through the years and is definitely worth a visit. There, you are welcome to make your own contribution to the collective, enduring project that is CIM.
Be st
ia ed
Finalist
Advertising sales Dovetail Communications Inc. Tel.: 905.886.6640; Fax: 905.886.6615; www.dvtail.com Senior Account Executives Janet Jeffery, jjeffery@dvtail.com, 905.707.3529 Neal Young, nyoung@dvtail.com, 905.707.3525 Subscriptions Online version included in CIM Membership ($197/yr). Print version for institutions or agencies – Canada: $275/yr (AB, BC, MB, NT, NU, SK, YT add 5% GST; ON add 13% HST; QC add 5% GST + 9.975% PST; NB, NL, NS, PE add 15% HST). Print version for institutions or agencies – USA/International: US$325/yr. Online access to single copy: $50. Layout and design by Clò Communications Inc. www.clocommunications.com Copyright©2017. All rights reserved.
Published 8 times a year by: Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum 1250 – 3500 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West Westmount, QC H3Z 3C1 Tel.: 514.939.2710; Fax: 514.939.2714 www.cim.org; magazine@cim.org
ISSN 1718-4177. Publications Mail No. 09786. Postage paid at CPA Saint-Laurent, QC. Dépôt légal: Bibliothèque nationale du Québec. The Institute, as a body, is not responsible for statements made or opinions advanced either in articles or in any discussion appearing in its publications.
adian Busines sM Can in
Printed in Canada 8 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
president’s notes
Back to the Future: learning from past greats in our industry
“The titans of our industry understood the power of collaboration.”
As this issue of CIM Magazine highlights our industry’s movers and shakers, I thought it was worth taking the time to look back at some of our sector’s great leaders to see what we can learn for our journey into the future. Recently, I had the opportunity to read Norman B. Keevil’s book, Never Rest on Your Ores. In it, Keevil, who has had a rich career as a geoscientist, innovator and mining entrepreneur, shares some amazing stories of the building of Canada’s largest diversified mining company, Teck Resources. As with many successful companies and great projects, Teck was not built by single individuals but by commitment and teamwork. The titans of our industry understood the power of collaboration, and according to Keevil the willingness to pass ideas back and forth works to strengthen the end result. He recognized that it takes not just a rich ore body and strong financial backing but good people. Peter Munk, Barrick Gold founder and a renowned philanthropist, passed away in March, and like Keevil he was a strong believer in people and the value of strong partnerships. Munk’s success was in large part a result of the relationships that he built. He, like others, found lasting value from building bridges with civil society. He left a legacy not only in our sector but also through his numerous community contributions, such as the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre in Toronto. Recent inductees into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame also tout similar values and attributes, which have been eloquently summarized by 2018 hall of fame inductee Terry MacGibbon (founder of FNX Mining, Torex Gold Resources, TMAC Resources and INV Metals) as the “three Ps of success” – perseverance, patience and passion. He too has recognized the strength in respectful, diverse and inclusive collaborations. Many of the same sentiments shared by these leaders underpin CIM and its member relations, networking and events. The ongoing CIM transformation will only strengthen these values, building strong networks and communities, shared contributions and collective ownership. Leaders past and present recognize the value of reciprocity, symbiotic relationships and connections. Enjoy this fascinating issue of CIM Magazine and reflect on the values and characteristics of all the incredible leaders in our industry.
Janice Zinck CIM President
10 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
120 years of tomorrows On behalf of all of us at ArcelorMittal Mining G.P. and ArcelorMittal Infrastucture G.P. – the leading supplier of iron ore in Canada – we’d like to congratulate CIM on 120 years of steadfast reporting on the mining industry. Truly a remarkable achievement. And now, it’s time to look to the future in an industry with global reach and indisputable importance. Because when you’re truly committed to transforming the future, tomorrow can’t come soon enough.
transformingtomorrow
ArcelorMittal AMEM / AMIC
chatter @CIMorg
CIM – Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum
RE: MINING’S #METOO MOMENT (MAY ’18)
developments
We Are Mining
Mining’s #MeToo movement Me Too Mining draws attention to harassment and sexual violence in mining By Kelsey Rolfe Courtesy of Susan Lomas
acquired by SMT Scharf), Atlas Copco (now Epiroc) and Artisan. Rocque said that since adopting the vehicles, the company had amassed 225,000 hours of operation with them. “That is a solid demonstration that this equipment works,” he said. Other miners have also taken note, with Goldcorp committed to having an all-electric fleet at its Borden project and Glencore doing the same for its Onaping Depth project, both of which are currently in development. The advantages have gone beyond decreasing ventilation requirements. An electric vehicle fleet produces less heat, dust, vibration and noise, which improves the work environment. “We get better productivity,” Rocque said Each piece of equipment comes with three batteries. At any given time, one will be in operation, one will be charging and one will be cooling. An average charge lasts two to four hours. The batteries for the LHDs at Macassa are changed using a crane, but the Z40 will have a different swapping process. Artisan has developed a system for loading and unloading haul truck batteries at the swap station without the need of a crane. Kirkland Lake has had to make changes to the power distribution throughout the mine to accommodate the power needs of battery charging, but no additional infrastructure was needed. There are a few downsides to using electric vehicles, Rocque said. Kirkland Lake’s three suppliers have different requirements for charging, something he compared to the difference between Apple and Microsoft computers. “We would like to have one computer that does everything, and you don’t have to worry about the name tag, but we aren’t there yet,” Rocque said. The cost of electric equipment is also much higher than diesel equipment, Rocque added, and new parts are expensive. But he said that in the long-term, the company is “very confident that we are going to see savings coming from the operation of the – Janice Leuschen equipment itself.”
Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum
Independent geological consultant Susan Lomas, pictured working in northern Ontario, started Me Too Mining in February.
Susan Lomas had her first experience with sexual harassment at her first job out of university, working as an underground geologist at a Timmins, Ontario, mine in 1988. She was put in charge of a group of samplers, and it was a hostile relationship. They printed out pornographic pictures and wallpapered them “right over my work area,” Lomas said. “It was so over the top. So I took them down carefully, not wanting that to be a part of the issue.” They put the pictures back up, she took them back down. And then one of the samplers came storming into the geology office. “He was so angry. Saying they were gonna break all my fingers and put my hand in the rock crusher,” she said. “That was the machine that ran right next to my work area. I could hear that thing going every day.” She reported it to the chief geologist, who talked to the samplers. But “there was nothing for-
mal done…they weren’t reassigned. I still had to continue working with them for a good six to eight months after that incident.” Lomas’s own experiences with sexism and sexual harassment over a 30year career in the mining industry, along with seeing news reports in the last year of women who chose to leave the sector after finding it too hostile a work environment, prompted her to start Me Too Mining in February. Lomas, now an independent geological consultant, said the goal of the organization, which she is setting up as a non-profit charity, is to advocate for a culture change to make the industry more welcoming to women. She also wants Me Too Mining, which builds on the #MeToo movement that took off on Twitter last year as a way to draw attention to sexual harassment in the entertainment industry, to start a conversation in this industry. May • Mai 2018 | 31
Susan Lomas is courageous. Agree: Stop teaching women to navigate a difficult system, let's just change the system. Many men want this too. – Marilyn Spink, P.Eng, @MarilynDSpink Thank you for helping to bring such an important issue to light. And for giving our #sistersinmining a voice. – Mel Stare, P.Eng., @mel_alista
My wife was denied to further her career in mining because her boss did not believe women should be involved in mining. But she was with the company long enough to see Title IV charges brought against her boss as well as several other managers. – Scott Culshaw With the emergence of the #MeToo movement, I wondered if something might come about in the mining industry. When I started in 1997, it was common for casual remarks to be made, and you just took it and dealt with it the best you could. Mining is a tough field, and you develop a thick skin. Exploration is slightly different, in my experience, in that you don’t need to be quite as on guard. The difference there is more subtle and you might not even realize you’ve been passed over for a position because of your gender. But I have seen an overall shift, and I'm positive that my younger coworkers aren’t experiencing the same attitudes as I did as a student over 20 years ago. – Tyna Desjardins, P.Geo
RE: THE OLD MODELS ARE OBSOLETE (MARCH/APRIL ‘18)
Great summary. We are far removed from the days when Canadian mining companies had massive R&D budgets. You have to wonder the great things that could be accomplished with those same investments today, given the speed with which technology is advancing (IT, materials, electrification, automation, sensors, connectivity...). – Guy Desharnais
12 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
Canadian Institute of Mining
@cim_mag
Dear Mr. Bergen, I just read the May 2018 issue of CIM and admire Susan Lomas for starting the Me Too Mining initiative. Like Susan, I joined the mining industry in 1988 and over my career working in underground mines in Ontario have suffered the same indignities she did – a few more, and as recently as this year. My career has changed in the last five years when I decided to pursue graduate studies in mining engineering. My professors are still all men, as they were when I was an undergrad. Out of curiosity I did a quick survey of the main six universities in Canada with mining engineering programs to see how many faculty members are women. Not surprisingly, I found that women are also underrepresented in the university education sector as well. Four of the six universities have no women mining professors, UBC has three of eleven faculty members and Queen’s has one. As an educator I have received negative feedback from my peers when I have encouraged students to use gender neutral language such as hoist operator, labour hours, or service raise instead of hoistman, manhours and manways. I have listened to new female graduates tell me that their work experiences have been no different than mine 25 years ago (love the job – could do without the rude comments followed by “I was just joking,” pats on the behind and more) and even visited a mine two years ago that did not have a dry for women going underground. Susan said it is hard to speak out and she is right. However, I believe that speaking up will help improve mining’s workplaces. I also believe that an industry that has learned to embrace new technology can learn to include and value a diverse team within its rock walls and academic hallways. – Donna Cortolezzis, P.Eng, PhD Candidate, Laurentian University
RE: THE MINER’S BIBLE (SEPT/OCT ‘17)
I was once lucky enough to be able to hold and look through a first edition of De Re Metallica that’s privately owned. Quite amazing experience for a mining geologist. It had been rebound in the 18th century but the book was 1st edition. The guy kept it wrapped in newspaper in a briefcase in his desk. Very unglamorous for such a classic. – Prospero Silver, @ProsperoSilver
RE: AGNICO EAGLE GETS LTE UNDERGROUND AT LARONDE (MAY ’18)
Wow. Wonder if the password will be open knowledge... – Shiv Sharma
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meeting the needs of challenging mining environments
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tools of the trade Compiled by Jordan Faries
Courtesy of Epiroc
When it comes to drilling safety, the less manual intervention required to add or remove rods from the drill string the better – it keeps the operator free of moving parts and potential injuries. A hands-free experience is key for Boart Longyear as it adds to its fleet of exploration drill rigs around the world, with two of its newer rig models being introduced in North America and Latin America: the LF160 and the LF350e. The LF160 is a top-drive coring rig. When paired with the company’s FL262 Freedom loader – a mechanical clawlike machine that lifts and attaches rods to the rig – it allows for a completely hands-free drilling process that the company says can cycle at the same speed as it would take to manually load the rods. “Drillers’ safety and productivity are front-of-mind in the design,” said Monika Portman, Boart Longyear’s director of product management and marketing, in a press release. The LF160 can drill to a depth of 1,800 metres, while the company’s latest rig, the LF350e, boasts the same hands-free experience and can probe up to 3,360 metres.
Courtesy of Boart Longyear
Speed and safety
Breaking smart Epiroc’s hydraulic breaker attachments are getting safer and smarter thanks to the company’s new Intelligent Protection System, which now comes with five of its heavy attachments, designed for carriers of between 22 and 80 tonnes. In a press release, the company said the system “makes the breaking process even simpler for the operator by automatically adapting the breaker’s operating behavior to any working condition.” To do this, the system combines Epiroc’s AutoControl and StartSelect features. StartSelect allows the breaker to sense when its chisel point is aligned with the rock and automatically start and stop, preventing any potential dry firing that could result in tool damage, while the AutoControl system can automatically adjust the piston’s stroke length based on the changing pressure between the chisel point and the target material. Epiroc said the system’s benefits include longer tool life and little to no operator intervention, resulting in a safer and more efficient breaking process. The company plans to incorporate the Intelligent Protection System across all its heavy class breakers by the end of the year.
The digitalization of mining equipment is providing not only a wave of new data on the performance and condition of machinery, but a smarter way of reading data that gives companies the ability to predict and address problems as they arise. This ability is what drives Schneider Electric’s new EcoStruxure Machine Advisor, a platform geared towards original equipment manufacturers to allow them to track, monitor and – if maintenance is required – provide stepby-step procedures for fixes. The product was designed with an eye towards maximizing efficiency, zeroing in on common mine-site problems like unplanned machine downtime and costly unexpected maintenance due to breakdowns. The platform collects data from an equipment provider’s fleet of machines and synthesizing it in a way that can accurately diagnose existing problems and create predictions for preventative maintenance. C
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Underwater android
The possibility of deep-sea mining was still decades away, but in January 1978 the CIM Bulletin’s Equipment for Industry section – the precursor to Tools of the Trade – highlighted a new piece of technology for underwater exploration. The Diver Equivalent Manipulator System (DEMS) is designed specially for use in exploration and production of offshore oil and gas, as well as salvage, construction and rescue missions, says General Electric. Exactly repeating the arm and hand movements of a remote master control unit, the hydraulically powered slave arm can perform virtually all tasks that a diver can. Able to move in six directions, the arm even lets the operator ‘feel’ the forces being exerted by the slave. This gives a degree of flexibility and dexterity never before available underwater.
14 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
Courtesy of Schneider Electric
Automated advice
A history of success in the mining industry Mining has been a vital part of the Canadian economy since the 1850s. Today, we are one of largest producers of mined materials in the entire world. In fact, Canada produces more than 60 diverse types of minerals and is among the leader producers of potash, nickel and aluminum. Needless to say, there is a lot of history and expertise here. Our nation’s status as a mining powerhouse attracted several innovative companies, one of which was Komatsu, an organization that has established itself as an indispensable partner to the mining industry. The business is made up of four brands: Komatsu, Joy, P&H and Montabert, each of which have a rich and storied history in the mining community. Komatsu’s history of innovation in hard rock Komatsu’s Joy and Montabert brands have been serving the industry for nearly a century. Their founders, Joseph Joy and Johannes Montabert, shared a passion for innovation and excellence. The contributions of these two mining pioneers have led to the development and manufacture of unparalleled and unrivaled hard rock mining solutions. Joseph Joy founded the Joy Machine Company in 1919. He was a true visionary whose contributions shaped the way we mine minerals today. Joy
excelled at developing mechanized mining innovations including cutting machines, loading machines, drills and conveyors. Joy hard rock mining products continue to reinvent and transform mining with products and solutions that not only meet, but exceed customer’s expectations. Johannes Montabert began the Montabert company in 1921. Much like Joy, He was always pushing the boundaries of what was possible. His focus was on utilizing the newest technologies to create state-of-the-art drilling products. That drive and ambition allowed the Montabert brand to become one of the most respected providers of hard rock solutions in the industry. Over the years, its hydraulic drills, breakers and drifters have earned the trust of underground mining operations thanks to their durability, performance, and low operating costs. Commitment to the customer Komatsu remains dedicated to providing customers with the hard rock solutions they need by engaging customers at their work site to thoroughly understand their needs and develop new products, technologies and services that make mining safer and more efficient. For more information on Komatsu Mining visit http://mining.komatsu.
Power distribution, redefined Connected, IoT-enabled solutions that simply work In buildings of any size or critical facilities, EcoStruxure™ Power helps you realize cost and time savings while delivering safer, more reliable power. It’s all made possible by Innovation At Every Level.
schneider-electric.ca/ecostruxure-power
©2017 Schneider Electric. All Rights Reserved. Schneider Electric | Life Is On and EcoStruxure are trademarks and the property of Schneider Electric SE, its subsidiaries, and affiliated companies. • 998-20072628_GMA-CA
U.S. tariffs rattle Canadian steel industry; aluminum producers less affected
Teck installs first production-scale machine learning system
Apple backs Rio Tinto and Alcoa’s planned carbon-free aluminum smelter
Quebec miner plans all-electric surface mine
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Developments Federal government purchases Trans Mountain Crown corporation to manage the pipeline expansion project until a new investor is found
Canada will buy the Trans Mountain expansion project from Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion, including the existing pipeline, and sell it to another investor, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr announced on May 29. The announcement came two days before Kinder Morgan’s May 31 deadline to abandon the project if, as the company stated earlier in May, it did not have “clarity on the path forward, particularly with the respect to the ability to construct through British Columbia.” Morneau called the purchase an “investment in Canada’s future.” The $4.5 billion covers the sale of Kinder Morgan’s physical assets – the existing pipeline and terminals – and the investment in the expansion. The government has also taken on an existing leadership team from Kinder Morgan to work on the construction this summer. After the sale is complete, which is expected in the third or fourth quarter of this year, the government will finish construction on its own. Morneau did not specify what he expected construction to cost. Kinder Morgan has pegged the cost of the expansion project at $7.4 billion. Until a buyer is found, a new crown corporation will manage the project.
Courtesy of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project
By Kelsey Rolfe, with files from Kevin Martine
The Burnaby, B.C. terminal of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline.
Kinder Morgan will help the government find a buyer until July 22. Kinder Morgan CEO Steve Kean said on a conference call that the company had “agreed to a fair price for our shareholders, and … found a way forward for this national interest project.” Morneau said the federal government has had “multiple investors” express interest in taking over the project, but does not have a target date in selling it back to the private sector and is focusing on getting construction started.
Ottawa will extend the federal indemnity it had previously promised to Kinder Morgan to any new investor in the project, to ensure it gets built. The Alberta government will also help to cover any “extraordinary costs” from construction, Morneau said. The sale is still subject to the approval of Kinder Morgan’s shareholders. Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers CEO Tim McMillan said the federal government “has clearly made a long-term commitment June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 19
Congratulations CIM on your 120th Anniversary
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to the oil and natural gas industry.” But he added that he hoped this would be an exceptional circumstance. “The situation shouldn’t have come to this.” The controversial project, which would nearly triple the Edmonton-toBurnaby pipeline’s capacity to 890,000 barrels per day of oil, up from 300,000 currently, has been beset by delays from British Columbia’s NDP government, which has promised to use “every tool available” to fight the project. Most recently, it proposed regulations to restrict the flow of diluted bitumen through the pipeline until it can study whether spills could be safely cleaned up. “What we have here is risks and delays caused by political uncertainty,” Morneau said. “A private actor can’t deal with that uncertainty between provinces.” Morneau said because the pipeline crosses provincial barriers the federal
government has jurisdiction over it. “We’re exerting our federal jurisdiction by purchasing the project,” he said. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley cheered the development, calling it “a major step forward for Albertans and for all Canadians.” At a news conference in front of the Alberta legislature after Morneau’s announcement, Notley said the pipeline will “unlock investment in our oil sands because we are now on the path to getting full value for our energy resources.” B.C. Premier John Horgan said the federal government’s decision to buy the project did not change his concerns. “The federal government has been abundantly clear they believe this project is in the national interest. They haven’t defined that,” he said. “I’ve been making the case that there’s a high degree of risk for British Columbia, a high degree of risk for our coast, which belongs to all Canadians.”
The expansion project is the subject of multiple ongoing lawsuits. A series of challenges filed by First Nations, environmental groups and the cities of Burnaby and Vancouver were amalgamated into one court action, in which the B.C. government is now an intervener. The B.C. government has also filed a constitutional reference question with the British Columbia Court of Appeal, asking if it can require companies to get provincial permission before increasing bitumen flow through pipelines, which would give the province veto power if it was able to do so. Two legal challenges to the project, from the City of Vancouver and the Squamish Nation, that argued the province of B.C. had failed to engage in proper consultation and had not conducted a proper environmental assessment were dismissed by a British Columbia Supreme Court judge on May 24. CIM
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U.S. tariffs rattle Canadian steel industry; aluminum producers less affected United States President Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on imports of Canadian steel and aluminum has drawn the ire of politicians and industry on both sides of the border, but experts say it will not stop the flow of imports to the U.S. The U.S. slapped a 25 per cent tariff on steel and a 10 per cent tariff on aluminum on the basis of “national security,” which took effect on June 1. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland announced dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs on U.S. aluminum, steel and other goods like Kentucky bourbon and Wisconsin gherkins, which as of press time were scheduled to take effect on July 1. Canada also filed a challenge to the tariffs with the World Trade Organization.
“The tariffs imposed by the United States on steel and aluminum are completely unacceptable, and in fact they are illegal,” Freeland said in the House of Commons in early June. “We are taking strong, responsive measures to defend our industry.” Cross-border steel trade is mostly balanced, with Canada sending more than 85 per cent of its domestic production to the U.S., according to the Canadian Steel Producers Association (CSPA). Most of that steel is produced in Ontario, while most aluminum is produced in Quebec. The U.S. sends about 50 per cent of its steel exports to Canada, the dollar value of which is roughly the same as Canada’s. Joseph Galimberti, president of the CSPA, said in a statement the decision “represents a baseless attack on the 23,000 Canadian households whose livelihoods are directly supported by employment in Canadian steel manufacturing.”
While both steel and aluminum producers are expected to be hard hit, major Canadian aluminum producers will likely suffer less. The U.S. buys half its aluminum from Canada, almost four times what it purchases from domestic producers. And U.S. smelters tend to be smaller and older than the ones in Canada run by large companies like Rio Tinto, Alcoa and Aluminerie Alouette, which makes it harder for them to boost production without building new facilities – an expensive, long-term undertaking. Experts doubt American producers will be able to raise production significantly. “We believe that material will continue to flow from Canada into the U.S. to supply U.S. needs,” said CRU Group director Paul Robinson. He said CRU predicts a limited reaction from U.S. manufacturers, and as a result few new jobs south of the border. “We can see some reactivations, but there would need to be a firmer policy in place over
CONGRATULATIONS TO CIM ON THEIR 120 ANNIVERSARY TH
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22 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
developments
a longer time horizon before you would see any move towards significantly reducing the import gap.” However, smaller Canadian aluminum producers have said they will have difficulty absorbing the cost of the tariff. In response, Quebec promised $100 million in loans to small-scale steel and aluminum manufacturers. The federal government has not yet offered similar support. Jean Simard, president of the Aluminum Association of Canada, told CIM Magazine Trump’s decision to impose tariffs was “the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong way.” The tariffs were also condemned by the Aluminum Association in the U.S. Simard also expressed concern about Trump’s threat to impose a 25 per cent tariff on automotive imports. “That would be catastrophic,” he said, “not only for Canada, but for the U.S.” Rio Tinto, which has aluminum operations in Quebec and British Columbia,
declined a CIM Magazine request for comment. In March, when Trump first proposed the tariffs, it said in a statement to S&P Global Platts that “aluminum from Canada has long been a reliable and secure input for U.S. manufacturers – including the defence sector.” – Kevin Martine
Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives win Ontario election The Ontario Progressive Conservative (PC) Party formed a majority government in June, ending the Liberal Party’s 15-year reign in the province. The PCs received 76 out of 124 seats in the provincial legislature after the June 7 election, with the NDP taking 40 and the incumbent Liberals trailing behind with only seven seats, losing official party status. Provincial Green Party leader Mike Schreiner clinched his
party’s first-ever seat in the legislature with his election in Guelph. “Tonight we have sent a clear message to the world: Ontario is open for business,” Ford told supporters at his election night party in Toronto. Chris Hodgson, president of the Ontario Mining Association (OMA) and a former Ontario PC mines minister, said the Association is “excited to work with the new government and cabinet, and we’re confident in their mining background.” During the campaign, Ford was criticized for bucking the tradition of releasing a fully costed platform. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne called the PC’s plan “not coherent,” and NDP leader Andrea Horwath mocked Ford for being “only prepared to write a list of things he might do and put it on the internet.” One of Ford’s major promises was to repeal Ontario’s cap-and-trade system, which went into effect in 2017, and take the federal government to court if it
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imposed its carbon pricing backstop on the province. “The prime minister’s hurting business in this country by giving them an unnecessary tax,” Ford said in February. Based on an independent legal opinion written for Manitoba, where Premier Brian Pallister is also contemplating suing Ottawa, it is a fight Ford would probably lose. The Supreme Court would be more likely to uphold the carbon pricing plan based on the federal government’s broad taxation powers, Winnipeg lawyer Bryan Schwartz wrote in October. The PCs have also said they will “cut through special interest and bureaucratic delays” around the Ring of Fire. Developing the massive chromite deposit in northern Ontario has been slow as the provincial and federal governments negotiate with the nine First Nations groups in the area. In August, Wynne announced the government had signed agreements with three First Nations to build an access road to the Ring of Fire, which would also provide all-season access to the Webequie, Nibinamik and Marten Falls First Nations. The road is part of the $1 billion the Liberals pledged in 2014 to invest in Ring of Fire infrastructure. The PCs have not said how much they expect infrastructure development to cost.
The party also promised to “move forward with resource revenue sharing from mining, forestry and aggregates” for northern towns and Indigenous communities, which they pegged as a $30-million-per-year cost, starting in the second year of their mandate. They have not said how much communities would receive. Hodgson said the OMA welcomed the revenue sharing. “We’ve been advocating this for a long time,” he said. “We think that is where the impact is, and that’s where the majority of the revenue should go.” Mining companies operating in the province can expect a tax break under the new government: the PCs said they plan to reduce the corporate tax rate to 10.5 per cent, down from 11.5 per cent – Kevin Martine currently.
Teck installs first production-scale machine learning system Teck Resources switched on a new machine learning system for predictive haul truck maintenance at its Fording River steelmaking coal operation in British Columbia in early April. Within the first three weeks of operation, 10 trucks were identified by the system as
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being in need of maintenance, and when mechanics investigated they found issues requiring repair work. The project, initiated in October 2017, is a joint effort between Teck’s Digital Systems group and the superintendents and maintenance engineers at Fording River. Teck laid groundwork for this technology back in 2011 by installing a company-wide digital platform and a suite of on-board performance Mobile Equipment Monitor (MEM) sensors and computers on all the Caterpillar and Komatsu trucks at the company’s steelmaking coal operations. The new machine learning system was applied to a subset of Komatsumodel trucks within the fleet and is programmed to look for specific electric and suspension faults. Teck estimates that machine learning systems like these have the potential to save between $2 and $4 million annually at a single site by minimizing unplanned maintenance. Real-time MEM data already detects more than 35 types of faults in the trucks. The data is collected in a Wenco database platform and delivered to site superintendents through sensor alarms, explained Kalev Ruberg, Teck’s vicepresident of digital systems and chief information officer. Now, through a partnership with Canada-based tech solutions company Pythian and using Google Cloud, the same data is run through a set of custom algorithms and returned as an additional alert to asset health supervisors, raising the alarm on trucks in need of maintenance. Ruberg said Pythian wrote algorithms informed by data supplied by Teck from faults that had already happened. “One of the key things we learned is you can’t just buy a product off the shelf or have someone remotely do this,” he said. “The Pythian engineers had to come on site and realize what the data they were looking at meant.” The system now diagnoses fewer than five per cent false positives. Ruberg said 60 per cent of the work required to finish the system was in data preparation, compared to 20 per cent developing the actual algorithms and 20 per cent setting up the production environment.
developments
He said the next step for some Teck coal sites is to continue to integrate the system into the regular truck mainte-
nance schedule, expand the system to more trucks and mobile equipment and use existing data to train the system on a
wider range of fault types. Teck will continue to expand the system across all – Kylie Williams sites.
Taking on the obstacles Canada’s “Diamonds in the Rough” aiming to be the first ever all-female team to attend the International Mines Rescue Competition
The International Mines Rescue Competition has a few rules. Every competitor must be wearing personal protective equipment (PPE), including gloves. They must be able to perform “long, arduous and physical labour.” And no competitor can have facial hair that might interfere with the seal of a face mask. The Diamonds in the Rough should not have any problem complying with these rules – especially that last one. Every member of the eight-person mine rescue team, and one of the two coaches, is a woman – a first ever in the competition’s history. The team has been 10 years in the making. Team coaches Kari Lentowicz, an emergency preparedness and response consultant from northeast Saskatchewan, and Bruce Coley, a senior safety officer at Cameco and an independent consultant, began discussing the possibility of creating an all-female team in 2007. But even when Coley first approached Naomi Fugle about joining last fall, the idea seemed nebulous – and that did not really change until March. “It wasn’t until maybe two months ago that Russia actually accepted us to go into the competition,” said Fugle, an environment officer at Cameco’s McArthur River mine. More than a dozen teams will compete this year, including ones from Colombia, China, India, Turkey and Zambia. Diamonds in the Rough is one of two Canadian teams; Kirkland Lake Gold is sending the other. The competition will take place in late September across different mines in Russia’s Sverdlovsk region, an area north of
Photos courtesy of Kari Lentowicz
By Kate Sheridan
“Diamonds in the Rough” team coach Kari Lentowicz, left, began talking about an all-female mine rescue team more than 10 years ago. Team member Naomi Fugle, right, was invited to join last fall.
Kazakhstan, and has five components, including a mine rescue simulation in an underground mine. That simulation will literally be one of the first tests of the women’s teamwork. The team, whose members are spread out across Canada, has not met up yet, though they plan to train together in August. “We’re going through Facebook to get to know each other and think about what we will be able to do the best,” Fugle said. “It’s a lot of visualizing right now.” Getting the funds to get to the training site – and then to Russia – is another huge part of the team’s preparations. Lentowicz estimated the team will need about $84,000 to train and attend the competition. The team has a GoFundMe page, and has received in-
kind support from Impact Marketing and Covergalls, a company that makes PPE like coveralls and gloves that fit women better than conventional equipment. Women in Mining and Women in Nuclear Saskatchewan is currently considering how to assist the team with fundraising. In addition, some of the team members’ employers have given them paid time off to attend the competition, Lentowicz said. Though financing the trip still requires work, Lentowicz said that this has not been the biggest challenge the team has faced. Finding enough women who were interested and qualified was very difficult. “There’s not many of us and it’s this one thing that’s really connecting us,” Fugle said. Building the team has therefore also June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 25
meant building a network of women around the industry. “I may only know of one other girl, but it’s the same with the other girls that they’d invited on the team and then you actually start to see that there are more women out there,” she said. Previous competitions have shown the advantage of having female team members, Lentowicz said – and in fact most of the team members met each other through past competitions. Some women, for example, are
small enough to squeeze into spaces where their male teammates cannot go, she said. And teams from countries where women generally do not work in mining have previously failed to recognize women in the mine rescue simulation as casualties that needed to be treated. “It was very innocently done,” Lentowicz said. “It was like, well, women don’t work at the mine, so why would she be a casualty?”
That might seem laughable, but a “women don’t work at the mine” attitude can influence decisions in Canada, too. Lentowicz recalled discussions around a new change facility being built at a mine operated by her former employer. The facility was to offer about a quarter of the locker space for women as it did for men. “I was like, ‘You need to make this bigger’ and they said ‘Come on, we’ll never fill that up.’ And with that attitude, of course you won’t.” CIM
Sherritt successfully pilots bitumen-upgrading process
based company, best known for its cobalt and nickel refining operations in Cuba and Madagascar, unveiled earlier this month a proprietary bitumenupgrading process that could effectively eliminate the need for diluent, a high-cost thinning solution currently used to transport oil. “Right now, the industry spends about $6 billion per year on diluent,” explained David
Pathe, Sherritt’s CEO. “We developed a process to upgrade that bitumen and eliminate that need while improving the quality of the oil.” If successful, the product has the potential to be a game changer for big companies operating in Western Canada’s oil sands industry, increasing export capacity without sacrificing quality or environmental sustainability.
Sherritt International has completed a successful laboratory test of a product with the potential to significantly impact Alberta’s oil sands – and save producers a lot of money. The Toronto-
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“If it is what we believe it is capable of being, it does have the ability to make the Western Canadian bitumen product more accessible, more transportable, and that’s a real priority for the Alberta government and for the country as we look at increasing pipeline capacity,” said Pathe. “We’d like to see this make a significant contribution to that.” Underlining the need for better upgrading technologies and a thinner, more efficient flow of oil through pipelines, Alberta announced in February a $1-billion loan guarantee and grant program for companies willing to set up upgrading facilities in the province. Whereas other partial upgrading techniques lighten oil enough to pass through pipelines by extracting carbon from it, Sherritt’s process instead injects the oil with hydrogen using its high-pressure autoclaves. The technology dates back to the 1950s, first applied to the company’s coal liquefaction operations, and has the ability to maintain the volume of the oil without stripping it of low-grade carbon. “If we put a barrel of oil into our process we get a barrel out,” Pathe explained. The bitumen is pumped into an autoclave similar to the way ore would be. After injecting the bitumen with hydrogen at a high pressure and temperature, Sherritt, with the use of a proprietary catalyst and mechanical agitation, can “induce a chemical reaction in the oil that binds the hydrogen, and thereby chemically lightens the oil.” Beginning in 2015 with Cuban heavy oil and more recently moving on to bitumen, the testing was carried out in the company’s research facilities outside of Edmonton in Fort Saskatchewan. It may seem like a divergence from the company’s wheelhouse, but Pathe said the technologies underlying the process highlight Sherritt’s unique expertise. “It does, on the face of it, appear a bit of a step-out for a cobalt company to suddenly be in the oil upgrading business, but I really do think it’s a real demonstration of Sherritt’s ability as a company for process design and for innovation, which we’ve always felt is a differentiating capability of ours,” said Pathe. According to Pathe, the potential environmental impact of the process is paramount. “It improves the quality of the oil without creating massive slag ponds that don’t have any real use and are an environmental challenge for heavy oil companies today,” he said. In addition to reducing residual slag, the process would also remove undesirable components like sulphur and heavy metals, which can be corrosive to the carbon steel of pipelines, and figure heavily in diluent. The process is still in the testing phase, but the company is preparing to test it on a larger scale, and Pathe said Sherritt, which licences its technologies to provide services to companies around the world, is in conversation with bitumen producers “to talk about their appetite to look at something like this, and how we might progress it to a more commercial solution.”
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Vale to transition Creighton deep zone to allelectric fleet Company will also develop Copper Cliff Phase 2, Victor projects as fully electric mines By Kelsey Rolfe
Courtesy of Vale
Vale Base Metals is transidifferent. We have the tioning its Creighton deep opportunity to take lessons zone to an electric vehicle learned to make the next fleet, and designing its future stage of decisions.” greenfield operations to be The transition at all-electric. Creighton, and the wider As vehicles in Creighton’s adoption of electric vehideep zone fleet reach the cles, will necessarily take time, Allen said, because end of their life they will be there are only so many replaced with electric vehicompanies that manufaccles, beginning this year ture them. They have also with an explosives loader only been making the vehiand three personnel carricle sizes mining companies ers. Next year 11 new have requested, so smaller pieces of electric equipment or larger equipment pieces will be brought into opera- As part of its plan to transition the deep zone fleet of its Creighton mine, tion deep underground, pictured, Vale will bring 11 new electric vehicles into operation next year. may not yet exist. Samantha Espley, general With increasing demand manager of the mining and mineral for battery-powered equipment from from, an overhead electrical bar, simiminers, there can be long wait times for processing technical excellence cen- lar to a streetcar. tre at Vale Base Metals, told CIM Espley said Vale is planning to use equipment – any type of vehicle, Magazine. battery-powered and tethered vehicles at including diesel, takes a long time to “This trend will continue as we Creighton, and is looking at redesigning build. “Now that we’re going to battery replace old diesel equipment with a the mine to accommodate things like equipment, you have to get in queue for new battery-electric fleet,” she said. charging stations and cranes to switch making a commitment,” Allen said. In addition, Vale’s Copper Cliff out the batteries, and make better use of “There may be pieces of equipment Phase 2 project, adjacent to the Copper the electric vehicles. “We’ve had to being built today that other [compaCliff mine, and its ultra-deep Victor adjust our infrastructure design more so nies] have spoken for. We can’t expect manufacturers to build these and just deposit, next to Glencore’s Nickel Rim than our mine design,” she said. Deep, are currently being designed as Allen said the company is still trying have them sit there, hoping someone will buy them.” fully electric mines. to determine the best charging strategy Last October Vale began trialing two At a depth of 2.5 kilometres, for large equipment like load-haulbattery-powered LHDs at its Coleman Creighton is Vale’s deepest operation. dumps (LHDs) and haul trucks. “Part mine in the lowest ore body. The sixof the work we’re doing to test and Moving to an electric fleet will help month trial was put on hold when the reduce the heat and diesel contami- introduce a variety of equipment types mine unexpectedly shut down in nants at depth, and reduce the mine’s is to get comfortable with the technolNovember so the company could make ventilation needs, said Cheryl Allen, ogy and how we can manage it,” she repairs to the mineshaft, but Espley principal engineer for ventilation at said. “We’re moving forward in a stratesaid it has resumed now that miners Vale, who has been involved in deci- gic way, so that we’re set up for successare back to work. ful implementation in future mines.” sions about which mines would benefit The focus on battery-electric equipShe added that as the company from battery equipment. ment is part of Vale’s “underground begins to introduce electric vehicles Vehicles in operation in the upper innovation roadmap,” Espley said. The into other mines, it may need to use a areas of the mine will remain diesel, first step is adding fibre-optic cable, combination of charging methods and and diesel equipment purchased more wireless communications and data-colequipment suppliers. “Each mine is recently for deep zone work will also lection systems for mobile equipment unique and may require something difcontinue to be used. The mine already at all its mines. “We have a communihas some trolley-trucks, which are ferent,” she said. “If it’s a new section of cations backbone in most of our mines, connected to, and draw their power the mine maybe we’ll do something 28 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
developments
but it’s definitely on our path to do, to catch up all the mines,” Espley said. After that, the company wants to add collision avoidance, and tagging
and tracking systems that are tied to a ventilation control system that sends air to where it is needed. It is also implementing a short interval con-
trol pilot at its Totten mine, and will be building a control centre to manage its Sudbury-area mines, surface plants and smelters. CIM
Apple backs Rio Tinto and Alcoa’s planned carbonfree aluminum smelter
Elysis will develop and license the technology so it can be used to build new smelters or retrofit existing ones, and sell anode and cathode materials that the companies say will last “more than 30 times longer than traditional components.” The two governments are contributing $60 million each and Apple has said it will invest $13 million in the company. “We are proud to be part of this ambitious new project, and look forward to one day being able to use aluminum produced without direct greenhouse gas emissions in the manufacturing of our products,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. The new process, a world first, produces oxygen as a byproduct and elim-
inates greenhouse gas emissions. It is already in use at Alcoa’s technical centre near Pittsburgh. Elysis estimated that, if implemented in Canada’s existing smelters, the technology could eliminate up to 6.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. “This is a revolutionary smelting process that can deliver a significant reduction in carbon emissions,” said Rio Tinto CEO Jean-Sébastien Jacques. “It builds on the key role aluminum has to play in driving human progress, by making products infinitely recyclable, stronger, lighter and more fuel efficient.” Elysis estimated it would have the technology fully commercialized in the coming years, with a technology package ready for sale by 2024.
A carbon emissions-free aluminum smelting process developed by Rio Tinto and Alcoa is getting backing from Apple and the federal and Quebec governments. Rio Tinto and Alcoa announced the process on May 10, along with a plan to together invest $55 million to develop the technology in a joint venture called Elysis, which will have its headquarters in Montreal and a research facility in the Saguenay–LacSaint-Jean region of Quebec. The province of Quebec will take a 3.5 per cent stake in the company.
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The growing pains of supply chain certification Supply chain transparency programs need work to address challenges faced by artisanal miners, experts say
German carmaker Daimler promised it would investigate its supply chain and joined the Responsible Cobalt Initiative in early May in response to growing concern about child labour in Congolese cobalt mines. The company, which owns Mercedes-Benz, uses cobalt in its electric car batteries and said it hopes that “transparency and governance will be improved, and the risks of child labor diminished” under the initiative. A month earlier, several of Rio Tinto’s Quebec operations were awarded the first performance standard certificate under a new Aluminium Stewardship Initiative. The initiative, launched in December, aims to create global standards for sustainable aluminum supply chains and relies on independent third-party audits for certification. Multiple mining companies and manufacturers have taken up a spate of initiatives in the first half of 2018 to make mining supply chains more transparent. In January, BMW and Codelco announced an agreement to cooperate on a sustainable and transparent supply of copper, with Codelco promising to ensure that the copper it supplies to the automaker meets certain ecological and social responsibility indicators. The same month, De Beers launched an online diamond traceability program to track diamonds from “rough to polish.” By May the pilot project had tracked 100 high-value diamonds from miner to retailer using blockchain, which the company explained creates “an immutable and secure digital trail” back to the source of each tracked stone. But experts in sustainable mining practices say these initiatives fall short of solving some of the major supply chain challenges, especially those faced 30 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
Kylie Williams
By Kylie Williams
Artisanal gold mining operations at El Alacran in northern Colombia support 195 traditional mining families.
by artisanal and small-scale miners (ASM), who need help to establish responsible mines and find trustworthy buyers for their products. Christopher Sheldon, the practice manager of energy and extractive industries global practice at the World Bank, said through a spokesperson that most of the existing assurance programs are designed for large multinational corporations, which are better able to cover upfront costs associated with these activities. “The mining industry is under increasing pressure to make the value chain more responsible and accountable from a social and environmental perspective,” Sheldon said. “But there is a need for assurance programs that consider and include the specific challenges of small and medium-sized organizations and artisanal mining operations.” Sheldon led the production of a World Bank report in July 2017 exploring the implications of the rapid uptake of climate-friendly technolo-
gies. The report provides an overview of the known reserves of these minerals and the extent to which they can be found in developing countries. “The overall material intensity of products required for the construction of clean energy technologies will significantly increase demand for key base and precious minerals and rare earth elements,” he said. As demand grows, so does pressure on the people and environments in resource-rich developing countries where clean-tech materials are found. Demand for rechargeable batteries has contributed to a boom in cobalt prices since the beginning of 2017. According to Amnesty International, more than 50 per cent of the world’s cobalt supply originates in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). And one fifth of the cobalt currently exported from the DRC is mined by hand by 110,000 to 150,000 ASM, including children. The World Bank estimates there are 100 million artisanal miners in 80
developments
countries worldwide. ASM production accounts for 20 per cent of gold mining and up to 20 per cent of diamond mining. While the overall goal of supply chain certification is to ensure that child labour, criminal elements and environmental damage are eliminated, the initiatives designed for global operators like BMW and Codelco are unrealistic for ASM operators, said Robert Stevens, director of partnerships and learning at the Canadian International Resources and Development Institute (CIRDI). “We need to look at the ASM sector differently than large-scale mining,” said Stevens. “The resources available to the ASM miner – the way they mine, the revenue they’re generating – is just so different to the larger scale mining sector.” Certification systems aimed at larger operators, like the Codelco-BMW partnership, are necessary, said Stevens, but so are systems realistic for smaller
scale miners. The primary intervention CIRDI endorses is to help ASM move from illegal and informal operations to formalized operations. Stevens said the Swiss Better Gold Initiative and the Alliance for Responsible Mining’s Fairmined Certification are two programs that target the issues faced by people involved in ASM. Better Gold buys gold from miners who are certified by a list of third-party programs it has approved, such as Fairmined, an assurance label that certifies gold from ASM mining operations that have worked to improve the social and environmental performance of their operation. This allows more value from the sale to go back to the miners themselves and prevents miners having to sell within an illegal framework to people involved with money laundering or drugs, or through paramilitary forces. Stevens and Sheldon agreed that although the trend toward supply cer-
tification for large-scale miners and manufacturers has given rise to a confusing assortment of similar programs, the benefits of participating far outweigh the costs. Small-scale miners need more support and a different set of resources and criteria to be applied. At this scale, Sheldon added, governments in developing countries should be part of this solution so that assurance programs for ASM do not supplant the role of government. Stevens said the ideal solution would be to combine industry associations with large international groups, such as the World Bank or the United Nations, together with NGOs to collectively agree on a set of standards. “There is no simple answer,” said Sheldon. “[But] there is a lot of scope for resource-rich developed countries to provide advice and support in the form of best practices and other contributions.” CIM
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Courtesy of Nouveau Monde Graphite
FROM THE WIRE StrikePoint Gold signed a letter of intent with Skeena Resources in May to purchase the Porter Idaho property near Stewart, British Columbia. The high-grade silver project contains two silver-rich vein systems, located two kilometres apart, on opposite sides of Mount Rainey. StrikePoint plans to diamond drill the underexplored area between the two systems to potentially add more ounces to the existing project. New Gold named Raymond Threlkeld as its new CEO in May. Threlkeld will replace former CEO Hannes Portmann. Threlkeld was the CEO of Rainy River Resources until it was acquired by New Gold in 2013, and between December 2016 and September 2017 was the company’s interim COO. Diamonds Province Mountain appointed Stuart Brown as its new CEO in May. Brown took over from interim CEO David Whittle on July 1. Whittle, who led the company since last June, managed its debt refinancing and its acquisition of Kennady Diamonds. Brown, who has more than 25 years’ experience in the diamond industry, was previously the CEO of Firestone Diamonds and before that the CFO of De Beers. B2Gold opened a solar plant at its Otjikoto mine in Namibia in late May. The company said the plant will cut its fuel consumption costs by 10 per cent and be one of the largest clean energy installations in the country. The sevenmegawatt facility cost $8.5 million and took two years to plan and build. Cementation Canada has signed a partnership deal with the Missanabie Cree First Nation to focus on underground mine development in Northern Ontario. Missanabie Cementation will be a majority First Nations-owned partnership. The deal was signed at the Mining Expo in Timmins, Ontario. The Missanabie Cree inhabit an area north of Wawa, Ontario. Compiled by Jordan Faries and Kevin Martine
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Nouveau Monde Graphite CEO Éric Desaulniers, right, with workers on site at the company's Matawinie project.
Quebec miner plans allelectric surface mine A Quebec junior miner wants to build the world’s first all-electric open pit mine at its graphite deposit north of Montreal. Nouveau Monde Graphite (NMG) is currently working on a feasibility study for its Matawinie project in SaintMichel-des-Saints, factoring in a completely electric design. The company expects the study to be completed in September. “With open pit mining, the economics are less obvious than underground mining, where you have ventilation,” said NMG CEO Éric Desaulniers. “But we’re pretty confident that after the basic engineering work is done, it will be revealed to be cheaper to operate all-electric.” Desaulniers said the company hopes to demonstrate it can use “ecoenergetic solutions while respecting deadlines and budgets.” NMG plans to use electric vehicles in the mine pit, with an on-site processing plant that would also be electric. The prefeasibility study, published in December, forecast production at Matawinie of 52,000 tonnes of graphite per year over a 27-year mine life. NMG hopes to achieve commercial production by 2022.
The feasibility study is being undertaken by Montreal engineering firm MetChem/DRA, with SNC-Lavalin, ABB, SGS Canada and Medatech Engineering also involved in its development. “As of the prefeasibility study, the productivity is the same, and the total cost of ownership is about the same” for both an electric and non-electric mine, said David Lyon, the business development manager at Medatech, which does electrification work for mining companies. “There’s still a lot of optimization to be done [in the feasibility study], and what we think is that at the end of the day it will actually be cheaper to run the mine electric.” NMG plans to be both a buyer and a supplier in the electric-battery market. Graphite is a component in the lithium-ion batteries that make electrification possible. “Our graphite is targeted towards lithium-ion batteries, so it’s natural for us to work with our customers to develop this project,” Desaulniers said. There are some factors that make electrification more practical for NMG than it would be for most surface mines. Matawinie, unlike some projects, is located directly on the main power grid, in a province with some of the cheapest electricity rates on the continent. It is also less than five kilometres from town, so noise levels are a factor.
developments
The challenge, Lyon said, is determining where the chargers should be located within the mine and how to introduce charging in the duty cycle without affecting productivity. NMG is also working with HydroQuébec to use its graphite to research ways to bring battery patents owned by Hydro-Québec to a commercial manufacturing scale, for use in better lithium-ion batteries. Any new discoveries will be jointly owned between the two partners. NMG said in mid-May that if the research is successful, the company will build another plant to process up to 100,000 tonnes of C
graphite concentrate per year into anode material for batteries, and purchase ore from other graphite suppliers to supplement its own production. Other companies are already looking at following NMG’s lead. Lyon said that two other large open pit miners have already contacted Medatech about getting equipment on a trial basis since NMG made its announcement. “I hope that everyone goes allelectric,” Desaulniers said. “It’s good for business, it’s good for the environment and I think that’s the way to go.” – Kevin Martine, with files from Jordan Faries
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Mining at EXPO ‘67 At the 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal, the world showed off its wares. Canada, as a world mining powerhouse, exhibited the many contributions of its mining industry. Photos from the World’s Fair appeared in the August 1968 issue of the CIM Bulletin, the best of which have been republished below.
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The February 1927 CIM Bulletin reported ongoing development at mines in the iconic Porcupine, Kirkland Lake and Cobalt mining districts in Ontario – including some operations you may recognize today. The ore which has been indicated by diamond drilling on the 17th level (2,350 feet) of the Dome mine has now been reached by a cross-cut, and although it is too early yet to say how large or how important an ore body will be developed by this work, it is considered one of the most important developments that have taken place on the property for some time. The diamond drilling indicated values of $24 per ton over a width of 22 feet. The new (No. 11) shaft at the McIntyre has reached a depth of 3,800 feet, and will probably be down below 4,000 feet before the end of February. The objective is 4,150 feet. It will be April before the shaft is completed and ready for operation. The McIntyre mill is treating 1,400 tons per day, and improvements and additions will bring this up to 2,000 tons. It is the intention to erect, close to the new shaft, an additional mill with a capacity of about 3,000 tons per day. At the Teck-Hughes [in the Kirkland Lake district], shaft sinking in the No. 3 ore zone is making good headway, and at the end of December, 1926, had reached the 15th level, or a total depth of 1,730 feet. It is stated that extremely high grade ore has been developed over great widths and lengths on the 11th, 12th, and 13th levels, and that diamond drilling indicates that similar conditions extend to a depth of at least 2,500 feet. The cross-cut being driven in the conglomerate along the boundary between the McKinley-Darragh and Nipissing properties, near Cobalt Lake, has disclosed several interesting veins, one of which shows a width of six inches of smaltite, with low silver values.
From top left, clockwise: Alexander Calder’s Man, Three Disks sculpture gifted by INCO; granite at The Face of Winter exhibit hosted by Ontario; the COMINCO-CP pavilion; The Mine from the Western Provinces pavilion; and the Minerals Court.
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Jon Benjamin Photography
CIM’s plenary speakers, from left: moderator and B2Gold CFO Michael Cinnamond; Hatch CEO John Bianchini; Cupel Advisory Corp. director Nicole Adshead-Bell; Osisko Gold Royalties CEO Sean Roosen; B2Gold president and CEO Clive Johnson; Continental Gold chairman of the board Leon Teicher; and Johnna Muinonen, RNC’s vice-president of operations.
Industry leaders stress importance of long-term thinking at CIM’s 120th annual convention Despite the sunny Vancouver skies, session rooms and the trade show floor at the CIM 2018 Convention were packed with attendees and exhibitors who were optimistic after a year of improving commodity prices and eager to start thinking differently about the future of mining. The conference drew 5,000 participants and 450 exhibitors from 40 countries to the Vancouver Convention Centre from May 6 to 9, organized in celebration of CIM’s 120th anniversary. During the plenary session, industry experts encouraged attendees to ditch short-term thinking and take a longterm view of project development. Hatch CEO John Bianchini said mining companies must adjust their investment timetables so projects come to fruition when markets are hot. “We have to start having the courage to counter-cyclically invest in development,” Bianchini said. “I know that’s
hard to do and there are lots of barriers to it, but that means doing your studies early on in the down part of the cycle, and investing in tech in the down part of the cycle. Those projects are much more successful when eventually executed.” Nicole Adshead-Bell, a director at Cupel Advisory Corp., said she noticed the same “short term-ism” in companies’ exploration strategies. “Because of pressure to produce results immediately, instead of going through years of [development work], there’s pressure to find the ‘glory hole,’” she said. “Exploration is a process. It’s not easy, and randomly poking holes in the ground is not likely to get success.” The conference offered 12 simultaneous technical streams, ranging from safety to geology to industry-redefining innovation. Sessions on autonomous haulage systems, sensor-based ore sorting systems and underground mining innovation were particularly well attended.
Teck Resources’ manager of operational technology, Dylan Bennett, gave a presentation on the company’s work to boost productivity through an “augmented” workforce. “We continually ask our shovel operators to do more, and simultaneously place more distractions in the cab,” he said about the industry, describing how Teck is introducing a smart shovel to help workers interface better with equipment. The convention also had events for students and young professionals, including a mixer for first-time attendees, a poster competition, the Young Mining Professionals’ Breakfast and the student-industry luncheon. Janice Zinck began her term as CIM president for 2018 to 2019 at the convention. Zinck is a director of CanmetMINING at Natural Resources Canada, in charge of green energy innovation. Next year’s CIM Convention will take place in Montreal. – Kevin Martine
CIM 2018 AWARD WINNERS A.O. Dufresne Award: Alain Blackburn CIM Bedford Canadian Young Mining Leaders Award: Amélie Rouleau, Bora Ugurgel, Gaeleen MacPherson, Mohammed Babaei, Nancy Komperdo CIM Distinguished Lecturers: Arnfinn Prugger, D. Chad LePoudre, Glenn Lyle, Dominic Fragomeni, Siri Camille Genik, Mary Wells, Marilyn Spink CIM Distinguished Service Medal: Malcolm J. Scoble CIM Fellowship: Daolun Chen, Norman B. Keevil, James Edward Beswick, Francis P. Yungwirth, Gregory Richards, Paul Blatter, Robert J. Carey, Roussos Dimitrakopoulos Diversity & Inclusion Award: Nancy Komperdo Hatch – CIM Mining and Minerals Project Development Safety Award: Bethune Mine – Legacy Project John T. Ryan Trophies: Rambler Metals and Mining Canada Ltd., Mosaic Potash Esterhazy, K1 Mine; Westmoreland Coal, Genesee Mine; New Gold, New Afton Mine; Cameco Corporation, Cigar
Lake; Sudbury INO (a Glencore Company), Nickel Rim South Mine; Goldcorp, Eleonore Mine; Mosaic Potash Esterhazy, K2 & Brine Inflow; DeBeers Canada, Victor Mine Mel W. Bartley Award: CIM Saskatoon Branch Mining Engineering Outstanding Achievement Award: William T. Schweng Mining Safety Leadership Medal: James Thomas (Jim) Joy Outgoing President Plaque: Kenneth G. Thomas Robert Elver Mineral Economics Award: Simon W. Houlding Selwyn Blaylock Canadian Mining Excellence: Peter N. Calder Towards Sustainable Mining Community Engagement Award: IAMGOLD – Scrap Metal Recovery to Support Local Initiatives Towards Sustainable Mining Environmental Excellence Award: Vale Canada – Sudbury Biodiversity program Vale Medal for Meritorious Contributions to Mining: Ronald R. Nolan June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 35
Invention born of necessity Engineer Theresa Nyabeze takes a do-it-yourself approach to diversity By Renee Sylvestre-Williams
ow you do become a role model for gender and racial diversity in mining? For Theresa Nyabeze, you conjure up a story to occupy four children on a road trip from Sudbury to Ottawa. “They just started to razz each other,” said Nyabeze, 39, a professional mining engineer who works as a frontline supervisor for Vale and is the CEO of Diversity STEM. “So I said, ‘You know what? Here’s a notebook. I’m going to dictate a book, and you’re going to write.’” That first draft has now become Nyabeze’s self-published book, Underground! My Mining Adventure, the story of Maiya, a young girl who explores the world of mining with her mother. Throughout the story, Maiya sees the diverse people and technology that make up Canadian mining. It was when Nyabeze compared the ear-popping effects of going down a mine to that of a plane taking off or landing that she realized she had something. “My nephew, who was visiting from the UK, had just experienced that,” she said. “It came to me that, oh my god, this is an opportunity for engagement right here with youth!” Nyabeze, who emigrated from Zimbabwe when she was 12, had initially planned to study medicine when she started attending Laurentian University. That is, until she took her first
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university-level biology class. “I used to sit next to this amazingly talented girl and she was so passionate about biology that, in that instant, I knew that I didn’t have a passion for it,” she said. Instead, she looked for something else and discovered mining engineering; it did not require any biology and her older brother Charles was already working in the industry. While doing her degree, she noticed a lack of mentors, especially those who looked like her. “When you’re in your own home country, it’s very easy to find role models. You find people who look like you,” she said. “I didn’t know it was a gap until I was taking mining engineering and I was seeing classmates who seemed to have more direction than me. I just felt that some of them seemed more networked and more mentored than I felt.” One of her professors invited a women in science and engineering group to talk to Nyabeze’s class and it was there she found her role model and mentor – Samantha Espley, who is now a general manager at Vale Base Metals – and decided to stay in engineering. Espley hired Nyabeze when she was still a student. “She’s super smart, had lots of energy and when we had the ability to hire, we hired her,” Espley said. Women are still underrepreTheresa Nyabeze with her daughter Chiedza Courtesy of Theresa Nyabeze / Don Richer Photography
we are mining
sented in the mining industry, making up 17 per cent of the workforce according to the Mining Industry Human Resources Council, but Nyabeze did not feel hindered when she began her career. “I’ve always had this thing that if somebody appears to not like me, I’ve always really relegated it to ‘maybe they’re having a bad day,’” she said. “I found what was challenging was more around being accepted as a young engineer in general.” Now she admits that her original outlook might have been naive, and some experiences have since revealed the biases toward gender and race that she and others must contend with. She pointed to times when she was the only immigrant, and often the only woman of colour, in the room, and to seeing her children experience situations in school that were not inclusive. “I started to really open my eyes around diversity. Are you really included, or are you just present?” That inspired her to advocate for more diverse workforces. “For me, it goes even to design,” she said. “If you’re designing things, if you’re creating systems, are you being inclusive of different viewpoints?” She also wants to encourage more young people, especially girls, to consider mining as a career. “My enjoyment of my industry makes me want others to participate in it,” Nyabeze said. “I can see how deeply seated stereotypes of an industry are hard to undo once you’re an adult. So we have to start our kids young understanding the opportunities for them that exist in mining, or even science, technology, engineering and mathematics, so they can make it part of their opportunity bank.” When she gives talks based on C
her book, she said she can already see more girls considering mining as a viable career option. Nyabeze is happy to take on the title of role model. “I embrace the responsibility that I carry when I enter a room and I am different, because for some people, I’m their first experience of a person of colour,” she said. “How they experience me is going to frame how they, in the future, embrace or include or promote people who look like me. I think it’s just realistic to understand that I carry that, and that’s life.” Unconscious bias exists, said Nyabeze, and instead of denying it we should recognize it and talk about it. While Nyabeze is doing her part to change the traditional face of mining, she has suggestions for industry leaders: “Let’s engage. Look in the room. What are you seeing in your room? What’s the diversity? Are [people from different backgrounds] being included and how do you use your position to further that dialogue?” CIM
We Are Mining
Throughout 2018 CIM Magazine will feature the stories and experiences of women, Indigenous people and people of colour working in the mining industry. Do you have an idea for a story we should report? Reach out: krolfe@cim.org
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The ladies of CIM
Women are now represented among the plenary speakers, expert presenters and delegates at CIM’s annual convention. But in previous decades, when the mining workforce was made up almost exclusively of men, the Institute created a “Ladies Program” for miners’ wives and other visiting women, which involved attending a succession of lunches, afternoon teas, awards banquets and other evening events, and was offered for several decades. As was noted in a post-event recap of the 1938 CIM annual general meeting in Toronto, “the ladies” enjoyed their social program, and men attending the conference, often fresh off a long stint at a remote work camp, were just happy to see women again. The womens’ dinner during the Annual Western Meeting
‘Splendid!’ ‘Delightful!’ ‘Wonderful!’ These are but few of the in Calgary, October 1951. enthusiastic adjectives we heard the visiting ladies apply to the gracious hospitality accorded them in Toronto. … We cannot now imagine an annual meeting without the ladies. Their presence is in itself a boon. And the success with which our meetings nowadays are made attractive to the ladies makes them that much more attractive to the men. To many a pair who spend the long winter ‘on the job’ in a mining camp, the big meeting in the spring has become an event to which they look forward for months. Their enjoyment of the meeting is so spontaneous and genuine that it is a pleasure for their urban friends to entertain them.
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How to use drones for reclamation planning By Kelsey Martin
erial surveying has the potential to help various industries, but one area in which the technology has proven incredibly useful is in mine site and quarry reclamation design. After years of relying on either the more traditional method of using GPS or the more expensive process of employing LiDAR, project operators can now acquire aerial topography data using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and, with the modelling software now available, use this data to create reclamation areas that are well designed and relatively inexpensive. Historically, mine operators have focused on lowering costs per cubic metre, which can blind them to opportunities to decrease costs by simply moving less dirt and using gravity to help move material at a lower cost. However, the industry must consider the post-reclamation costs of a job done poorly. UAVs can be used to improve reclamation performance while decreasing costs. The process begins with combining
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high-precision GPS and aerial survey data to recreate the topography in question. Typically, if a survey begins on a Monday, the data can be processed by Wednesday, with a preliminary design completed shortly thereafter. Although UAVs cannot cover as large an area as LiDAR data can, aerial surveying has proven to be a fraction of the cost per hectare. That is not to say that there is no need for LiDAR; it remains the best option for large areas or land covered in vegetation. In mine site reclamation, however, vegetation is rarely an issue and the areas in question often lend themselves perfectly to UAVacquired topography. Once the data is acquired and processed, some operators use this data themselves, but more often than not, a suite of software is used to build a final design surface. The first step in this process is to virtually recreate the effect of rain to see where water accumulating on the surface will flow and ultimately where it will pool. A dragline consultant once told me,
Congratulations to CIM on its 120th year as the leading technical society for minerals, metals, materials and energy professionals in Canada!
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column “If you want to move a lot of dirt at a low cost, quit fighting with gravity and instead use it to your advantage.” There is some impressive software out there that can take hydrologic information from the surrounding area and incorporate that data in the final surface design for the reclaimed area. By levelling to the lowest area and incorporating the surrounding hydrologic measurements into the design, mine site operators can end up with a more efficient reclamation design, minimize erosion after reclamation by mimicking the surrounding hydrology, and develop wetlands or bodies of water that are large enough to be useful for process water, livestock watering or recreation areas rather than the small deranged drainage patterns we have seen too often. After travelling to Australia, Indonesia, and Mongolia last fall as part of a larger group meeting with many mid- and large-tier mining companies, it became clear to me that companies are now being measured on their reclamation performance. As companies go to where the resources are, and strive to develop new mine sites, past reclamation performance is becoming a very large factor in determining if a company will obtain the required permits and licenses. In addition to licenses, public acceptance has also become such a large vari-
able that the cost and risk associated with delays and hearings far outweigh the cost of an exceptional reclamation record. If you have done a great job in past reclamation, it speaks volumes to how the company will perform if given the permission to develop a new deposit. It is very hard to put a number on this, but if it is a matter of developing the next operation or not, the money spent doing the best possible job on your current reclamation is well worth it. Ultimately, it is incumbent on all mine operators to not only ensure that costs are minimized from exploration to final reclamation and every step in between, but also to ensure they are doing everything possible to secure public acceptance, as each and every employee has an effect on a company’s reputation. As Benjamin Franklin said, “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” Nothing could be closer to the truth for the resource industry today. The tools we have now give us the opportunity to build our reputation without breaking the bank. CIM
Kelsey Martin is the president of Martin Remote Sensing Corporation, an aerial surveying company that focuses on aerial data acquisition and design.
You are invited to share comments at editor@cim.org
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Courtesy of Teck Resources
Teck Resources reused off-the-road tires to create a mechanically stabilized earth wall at its Highland Valley Copper mine.
Reimagining a tired design Teck Resources reuses old tires to build mechanically stabilized earth walls at Highland Valley Copper By Cecilia Keating
t any one time, there are 300 haul truck tires rolling through Teck Resources’ Highland Valley Copper mine in southern British Columbia, fitted to the operation’s 50-strong fleet of Caterpillar 793 haul trucks. With a wear life of roughly 12 months, that means 300 orphaned tires per year. And while some are repurposed to create berms (raised barriers beside a haulage road or dump point) or to protect mine infrastructure, Highland Valley Copper’s senior geotechnical engineer, Mathieu Veillette, said that historically the tires are “mostly stockpiled.” Tire stockpiling is common on mine sites, given that the cost of recycling haul truck tires, which weigh over 3,500 kilograms each, is steep. Tire Business magazine reported in 2010 that large off-the-road scrap tires cost between US$100 and US$200 to recycle, not counting shipping costs. These are all reasons why, when Teck needed to build a new mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) wall for the mine in late 2014, it decided to construct it using old haul truck tires. The 16-metre-high wall would require 600 tires to be used for both the wall’s face and its anchoring components, buried in the wall backfill. At the time, Teck was extending the Highland Valley Copper open pit in order to reach 30 million tonnes of newly categorized Mineral Reserves. As a result, one of the mine’s existing crushers needed to be moved closer to the new ore body so that haul trucks did not waste time, fuel and money ferrying ore long distances. The new MSE wall surrounds the
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crusher in its new location on three sides, tightly clamping back the surrounding earth. It also provides a much-needed ledge from which haul trucks can dump material into the crusher from above. MSE walls, a common fixture in open and underground mines as well as bridges and highway construction, are traditionally produced by specialist companies and made from custom-made geosynthetic, metal or concrete facing elements attached to layers of metal strips, mesh and geogrid nestled in the wall backfill. “It’s cheaper and more sustainable to reuse worn tires than to buy all these new products and hire a vendor to create this wall,” explained Veillette. Teck spokesperson Chris Stannell said that the savings from constructing the wall using tires versus a standard MSE wall was “in the range of 25 to 50 per cent, along with the environmental benefits associated with reusing haul truck tires,” although he noted that a number of factors are variable to each project, including materials and engineering. Teck could not provide an overall cost for the project.
Dusting off an old idea The inspiration behind using old haul truck tires came from an existing tire wall at Highland Valley Copper that had been built in 2005. The pencil drawings and other key design and construction files of the existing wall had not been well documented, however, so Teck turned to BGC Engineering to construct and design the new wall. The firm
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was already employed in other elements of the crusher move. There was one key difference between the old tire wall and the new wall: the new wall’s face would include a vertical portion around the pocket where the crusher’s steel hopper would be inserted. The rest of the new wall’s face, like its predecessor, would have a battered, or receding, slope. BGC was happy to take on the project. “We asked around and it seemed like no one else had designed [MSE walls out of used haul truck tires], or if they had, it hasn’t been documented,” said Eric Coffin, one of BGC’s project engineers on the wall’s construction, who presented the work for the first time at the CIM Convention in May in Vancouver. “So we wanted to write a paper on it and get it out there and let people know what we are doing. It’s a good way to reuse these tires.”
Making a wall out of wheels The first step of the process for BGC was a full-scale pull test in April 2014, constructed about five kilometres northwest of Highland Valley Copper’s mill. Two Caterpillar 793 tires, which have a 3.5-metre diameter and are 1.1-metres-wide, were wrapped in steel cables of different sizes and buried in a stockpile of the area’s naturally occurring sand. The same sand would be used for the wall’s backfill, another practical, affordable and sustainable choice. “The tire is an unknown object in the whole design,” explained Coffin. “We needed to test the strength of that rubber.” Using an engineered “loading apparatus” comprised of steel beams, steel thread bars, monitoring instruments, a hydraulic jack and concrete blocks, the team applied different forces on the cables in order to see whether they would rip or dislodge the tires. In the end, the pull test revealed that the tires could withstand at least 540 kilonewtons (about 121,000 pounds) of tension without ripping or moving. (This is a conservative upper limit, given that a separate calculation on an inflated and unburied haul truck tire indicated that it could endure over double that force.) This pull test informed the final design of the wall; BGC could rest assured that connections between the haul truck tires and the 22-millimetre-diameter cables could easily resist the calculated load for the final wall. Construction on the wall began in September 2014. Used tires were delivered to the site by flatbed trunk and hoisted and moved using an excavator thumb apparatus. Front-facing tires were attached to anchor tires by seven-metre-long steel cables, which were tightened around the tires using Crosby clamps and pulled tight using an excavator bucket. Sand was carefully and densely compacted inside and between the tires as well as between the anchor tires and the existing slope. In mid-October, when the wall was 12 rows high and 75 per cent complete, operations were suspended for the winter months. Then BGC encountered a design challenge. The front tires at the top of the vertical section of the wall were leaning into the crusher hopper pocket. Coffin said he suspected the lean was because “the sand wasn’t fully compacted inside the front of those tires.”
“It was only a couple centimetres, but it was leaning, so we put a halt to construction and came together to think about the best way forward,” he said. The team decided to move the crusher in before raising the wall to its final height. On May 5 the crusher was lugged on a self-propelled trailer to its new home in the wall’s pocket. This resolved the inward deflection problem and mitigated any safety concerns, said Coffin, because, as anticipated, the “crusher supported the lean.” The gap between the hopper structure and the vertical wall was then filled with gravel. The final layers of the battered section of the wall were laid and the concrete apron was installed at the top. The tire wall was completed on schedule on May 22, 2015; it is expected to last until production at Highland Valley Copper ends in 2028. Veillette said Teck “liked the results” – and joked that “we haven’t heard anything more about it, so we know it’s working well.” He said Teck would gladly consider using tires for future MSE walls at the mine. “Overall, we’re just glad we can use those tires for something sustainable and useful,” he said. Coffin said he thinks other mines will follow suit, too, if they need a wall and have a surplus of tires. “It’s innovative and seems fairly simple to construct compared to a concrete MSE wall.” CIM
HATS OFF TO CIM! BBA congratulates CIM on 120 years of service to our Canadian mining community. We’re proud to be part of this fast-evolving industry. The best is yet to come!
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Courtesy of ArcelorMittal
Goldilocks autonomy By the end of the year, there will be nine drills outfitted with the autonomous operating system.
ArcelorMittal opts for a partial autonomous drilling system at its Mont-Wright mine By Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco
our years ago, ArcelorMittal Mining Canada G.P. began to explore switching over to an autonomous drilling system (ADS) at its Mont-Wright iron ore mine in the North Shore region of Quebec. With 11 drills by different manufacturers and numerous practical challenges, this was not going to be an easy task. The company determined a 24/7 autonomous system was not their ideal end goal for Mont-Wright at this moment and instead they explored the opportunities of partial autonomy. The mine’s electric drills operate 21 hours a day. The remaining three hours are lost to operator breaks and shift changes. “Three hours a day represents a decent chunk of time where your drill could be drilling,” said Saad Hameed, director of operations for the IROC and co-lead for the ADS project. “We wanted to recover structural downtime.”
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ability of a new third party system’s software to communicate with the original equipment manufacturers’ (OEMs) onboard control systems – was a formidable challenge. ArcelorMittal decided to work with Caterpillar, which has been working on autonomous drilling for years and introduced its first such system in 2012, in order to develop a new technology to overcome this challenge. “We have customers around the world that have interest in autonomy,” said Jim Peterson, mining technologies application specialist at Caterpillar. And although Caterpillar believes its drills are the best solution, said Peterson, it also wanted to develop options to help all potential customers looking to introduce autonomous drilling into their operations. “So that’s the goal of this project: to be able to provide the same benefits to customers with different products,” said Peterson.
Enter Caterpillar With four different types of drills by two manufacturers and only seeking partial use of autonomous drilling to increase Mont-Wright’s productivity, ArcelorMittal did not want a costly complete retrofit of all the drills. “You would basically redesign most systems on board if you did that,” said Hameed. The solution they needed did not exist. From a technological perspective, the interoperability issue – in this case, the 42 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
The new technology OEMs periodically introduce upgrades and improvements to the programmable logic controllers (PLC) on board their equipment. This meant that the interoperability challenge would not be a one-time issue. “You don’t want to disrupt the autonomy because the PLC has had an improvement or enhancement,” said Peterson. Conversely,
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Caterpillar also wanted to ensure customers could still benefit from the ongoing improvements OEMs provide to their customers. The solution they developed was to essentially bypass the challenge by developing a layered system that does not alter the onboard system. The new technology begins with an innovative new bolt-on interface that leverages the base machine’s controls, then adds Cat Terrain’s high-precision satellite positioning system, which determines the placement, depth and angle of holes in a single row using guidance software. The system also has an autonomous technology layer as well as a remote assistance layer. Instead of replacing the onboard controls, the new system’s computer provides a virtual operator. On an offboard tablet, an operator can manage and monitor the virtual operator’s autonomous drilling. “It’s a non-intrusive system so in case it fails, the [human] operator could continue to do their job with the drill’s onboard system,” said Hameed, who added that it is also considerably less expensive than a traditional retrofit. The system is scalable so if in the future ArcelorMittal decides to add more autonomous features, it will be able to do so. “You can keep an operator in the cab but you still have all the autonomous factors,” said Peterson. “You then can move your operator out of the drill to operate it remotely.”
“There’s a double whammy benefit there,” said Plourde. “One is the reduction in maintenance and the second is reduction in production variability.” Reduction in variability is automation’s sweetest spot. “The company’s leadership and innovation strategy is moving toward lower variability and a smoother operation,” said Hameed. “So how do we control variability? This project fits really well with what our strategy is.”
Next steps Caterpillar is now adding the new ADS technology to its electric and diesel drills. “A site with diesel or electric drills can have the same autonomous capabilities now,” said Peterson. “Customers don’t have to take an all-or-nothing approach to automation. There is a lot of change management that needs to go into taking a manned operation into an autonomous one. We have about five building blocks on these drills to build up autonomous technology.” From ArcelorMittal’s perspective, the project confirmed its strategy of partial automation. “We were able to confirm that these apparently small gains with the addition of partial autonomy were actually quite important and really worth it,” said Hameed. “So much so that it pays for itself very quickly.” CIM
Going live In October 2015, the team installed the Cat ADS bolt-on system on one drill. Over the following year, ArcelorMittal assessed the performance of running the drill during breaks and shift changes. The assessment confirmed the new system resulted not only in improved productivity but also in higher drilling quality and rates. In 2017, the system was installed on two more drills. There were some unexpected benefits as well. “We’re also seeing additional performance for operators who can now leave the drill when their help is needed somewhere else and come back,” said Michel Plourde, director of innovation and technology for the Integrated Remote Operations Centre (IROC) at ArcelorMittal and lead on the ADS pilot project. “They’re happy and they are getting other things done. We wanted to help people understand that this is a technology that is there to assist them, to enhance their work, and that becoming an autonomous drill operator themselves is a job enhancement.” Today, five drills have the Cat ADS bolt-on system. By the end of this year, that number will grow to nine, and the project will be complete, since two of the drills are near the end of their life cycle and will be retired. The increase in productivity will make it possible for Mont-Wright to continue operating without having to replace the two drills. Even with partial autonomy, ArcelorMittal has noted that the more the autonomous system is used, the greater the reduction in wear and tear on the equipment. “With autonomy, you get a steady productivity and there’s a really good chance you will reduce maintenance costs,” said Hameed.
Congratulations to CIM for 120 years of supporting the natural resources industry.
QUÉBEC INC. NYSE: HL hecla-mining.com | 800.432.5291 Coeur d’Alene, Idaho | Vancouver, British Columbia
June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 43
Courtesy of Ward Wilson
Two liabilities, one stone A double solution to acid mine drainage and wet tailings dam failure By Christopher Pollon
wo of the mining industry’s biggest challenges today are acid rock drainage (ARD) and wet tailings storage liability. Ward Wilson, professor of geotechnical and geo-environmental engineering at the University of Alberta and the NSERC/COSIA Industrial Research Chair in Oil Sands Tailings Geotechnique, says mixing dewatered tailings and waste rock together can provide a “double solution” to deal with both.
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CIM: What path did you take to your current career? Wilson: I studied civil engineering at the University of Manitoba, which was my start. When I was at the University of Saskatchewan, originally to study slope stability in geotechnical engineering, I started looking at cover system and closure design to stop ARD from tailings and waste rock. Placer Dome (which became part of Barrick) funded a massive research program, which allowed me to go to NSERC and get funding to look at various ways to stop ARD. After that, my work blending tailings and rock started while I was at the University of British Columbi (UBC) a serving as an Endowed Research Chair in Mining and the Environment from 2000 to 2010.
CIM: What is driving the current flurry of attention on tailings storage and closure issues? Wilson: Mount Polley was a major issue, but the Fundão tailings dam failure really caught the world’s attention due to the magnitude of the event. And now it has the attention of the Wall Street Journal – so even the financial community is very concerned about this problem and we’re still building bigger dams all the time. Meanwhile, ARD is a global problem that could cost $100 billion to fix. C
CIM: How do paste tailings figure into your idea? Wilson: The approach is to mix tailings and waste rock together. Waste rock is responsible for up to 85 per cent of all ARD – and thus it mostly comes from the waste rock and not the tailings. So then-Placer Dome vice-president Keith Ferguson and I came up with this idea: Why don’t we seal up the rock with tailings? Imagine making concrete – you use gravel, take some sand and then you mix in a ratio of cement and water to get a mixture. Concrete is what’s called a “mix design.” Paste rock, while it does not use cement, should also be considered a “mix design.” You’ve got to control the blending ratio and the water content to come up with an optimum mixture. And when you hit all that, you have a tight, dense, strong saturated matrix that has low compressibility, high strength and high resistance to oxygen diffusion.
CIM: You have described this approach as a “double solution” to deal with both permanent wet tailings storage and ARD. Can you explain? Wilson: We can use dewatered paste-consistency tailings and blend it with the waste rock to fill the matrix of the rock with paste tailings. That’s important, because you fill all the voids
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Reporting for duty
The increased use of air warfare in WWII created a large demand for high-quality light alloy products. Magnesium is the lightest structural metal, but at the time research was needed to mass-produce magnesium alloys with uniform quality. Canadian Armed Forces agencies and the war industries called on the country’s Bureau of Mines to study magnesium alloys that had failed in fabrication “or in actual service,” and offer suggestion on better fabrication methods. A paper from the February 1948 CIM Bulletin, reported on the results of such wartime testing. Perhaps the most important conclusion from the investigations was this: Recently introduced foundry methods have improved the quality of magnesium alloy castings to such an extent that they compare favourably with aluminium alloy castings, even without consideration of their higher strength-to-weight ratio.
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surface mining
with paste tailings and retain enough water to keep oxygen out while lowering permeability. So we end up with a material that is sealed, thus it won’t have this ARD problem, and we also get the structural strength of the rock. It’s not compressible and has high strength. Initially the approach was intended to cure ARD at the time of deposition. Now we’re getting dam failures and tailings are proving to be a problem because they are low strength and have a high water content – and are liquefiable. The double solution is we get both physical stability – it is not going to have liquefaction flow slides – and chemical stability so that it maintains a resistance to oxygen diffusion, metal leaching and ARD.
CIM: Does the water have to be taken out of the tailings first before it is combined with waste rock? How would this work in practice on a mine site? Wilson: Yes, you’ve got to dewater the tailings; you can’t use slurry tailings. So you dewater and get it to a paste or filtered product that’s not fluid. Then you have to have a method of combining the two, which can be very simple. It can be done on conveyor belts.
CIM: Where is this approach being employed? Wilson: At UBC I was involved with two projects – we
CIM: What are the potential limitations with this approach? Wilson: The one fear I have is that people will try it, but not mix it properly; it’s got to be well mixed. The design has to hold true. It’s like building concrete buildings – you just don’t shovel in the sand and gravel, etc. You have to create the proper mixture and get the geochemistry right. So you need to have people who know how to do it. It needs quality control and quality assurance. And it’s going to cost more. I think that’s been a source of resistance. Mines have to make money. You always have to start with investment and start-up costs; they don’t get revenue early on, so high capital cost up front is a barrier. But what I’ll say to that is just look at the companies treating ARD now, they may never walk away. They will be in the business of ARD treatment for centuries.
CIM: By 2040 will the industry still be leaving wet tailings dams to perpetual care and chance? Wilson: We will see a transition in response to the threat of liquefaction of tailings. We’re already on the edge of seeing a whole new generation of tailings impoundment design. What we need to do now is train young and intermediate engineers – the next generation – to have a high level of practice in dam stability and integrity. CIM
partnered with Placer Dome and Inco (which became Vale) at the Porgera mine in Papua New Guinea and Copper Cliff mine in Sudbury, respectively. They haven’t actually implemented it but they have done experiments at field scale, demonstrating that it works. The results of that work went into peer-reviewed journal papers, including the papers published by Dr. Ben Wickland who constructed the experiments at Porgera. We’re at the point where companies are ready to pilot this. Canadian Malartic is currently building field-scale trials. CodelcoTech is also evaluating the approach, and Golder Associates is working internally on perfecting the use of a material they call PasteRock. Goldcorp is looking at blending filtered tailings with rock, something they are calling EcoTails. They want to move to filtered tailings, getting away from ponds and dams, and are aggressively pursuing this. Finally, Newcrest Mining is also investigating paste rock for potential greenfield sites, which is the perfect time to start.
CIM: Further to the greenfield, I presume this mixed paste approach provides a way to avoid future costs and liabilities from perpetual water treatment and dam failures? Wilson: Using paste rock is a way to design for closure, for sure. With ARD, you have to prevent it right from the get-go. The day you deposit, you need a mine waste material that does not react and oxidize and is chemically stable. With waste rock dumps, you might operate for a decade, or two or three, and all the while it’s open to oxygen and precipitation and is reacting before you even get to closure. And that’s a problem. It’s so hard to correct once the acid, the water and the drainage is all there. That has been one of the main issues with ARD; mitigation is difficult, so prevention is the key. June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 45
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Names TO Know
2018
Compiled by Ryan Bergen, Virginia Heffernan, Cecilia Keating, Kevin Martine, Christopher Pollon and Kylie Williams
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The industry has turned a corner. Talk of “digital transformation,” which has occupied so many panel discussions, think pieces and press releases, has shifted to action. As we put together our annual who’s who of mining, our choice of subjects reflects that surge in tech adoption. But within this year’s list there are also leaders showing the way forward for exploration, social responsibility and sustainable mining, all of which are critical to the future of mining. Together they are CIM Magazine’s 2018 Names to Know.
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Jon Benjamin Photography
architect
KALEV RUBERG VP, DIGITAL SYSTEMS, TECK RESOURCES
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ith experience spanning academia, the private sector, government and even a start-up, Kalev Ruberg came to the mining sector rather late in his career. When he arrived 12 years ago, he found a “very fractured landscape” from a technology systems point of view. “Independent development may result in a one-off success, but being entrepreneurial and working in silos is the biggest challenge we all have,” said Ruberg. “We need to govern the way innovation proceeds into production. The innovation success we’ve had at Teck has come from a very disciplined platform approach because it has staying power.” Ruberg joined Teck in 2006 as chief information officer (CIO) and was named vice-president of Teck Digital Systems last December. The common theme that runs through Ruberg’s wide-ranging career is designing systems that connect human behaviour and technology. In the late 1970s, Ruberg earned a master of architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he used machines to optimize building design for energy efficiency. He studied under the guidance of renowned professor Nicholas Negroponte, who founded the MIT Media Lab, where the technologies that enabled the digital revolution were born. He continued to design energy-smart buildings at what is now the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, and taught knowledge-based systems and computer-aided design at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He then spent eight years with the National Research Council of Canada, where he developed a system for using artificial intelligence
(AI) to diagnose problems with buildings, and later joined IBM, where he helped build “the world’s largest real-time object-based control system for manufacturing electronic boards.” For a change of scene, Ruberg spent two years as assistant deputy minister and CIO with the Government of Manitoba, before trying his hand with a tech start-up. Then, after building the TELUS Health platform, which uses technology to connect doctors with patients, he joined the mining industry as CIO of Placer Dome in 2004. So far the work of the Digital Systems team at Teck is yielding practical results. In the first half of 2018, the major miner announced the implementation of a number of technologies at its operations, including a machine learning system that predicts when trucks will need maintenance and a heads-up display for shovel operators. His team has also worked with the technology and innovation team, led by Greg Brouwer, and the operations team, led by Shehzad Bharmal, to deliver shovelmounted sensors that separate ore from waste rock and a sixtruck autonomous haul truck pilot planned for later this year. The complex intersection between people and technology remains Ruberg’s focus today at Teck. His priority is “building a team capable of doing the analytics in a way that is woven into the fabric of how we operate,” while at the same time nurturing people who “think broadly at the system scale and balance that with people who have deep knowledge.” Kylie Williams
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Courtesy of Sherry Dunsworth
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n 2006 Sherry Dunsworth was consulting on the Valentine Lake project in western Newfoundland for Mountain Lake Resources when she happened upon some racks of drill core that had never been sampled. When she took a closer look, the structural geologist discovered the core was streaked with extensional veining and visible gold. “That really stuck in my head,” said Dunsworth, who recognized quartz-tourmaline veins similar to those that characterize the gold deposits of the Abitibi belt in central Canada. Today she is senior vice-president of exploration for Marathon Gold, which now owns 100 per cent of the 240-square-kilometre The project after purchasing Mountain Lake in 2012. In May, the company issued a preliminary economic assessment that projects an 11-year mine life averaging production of 188,500 ounces per year at all-in sustaining costs of US$595 per ounce. Valentine Lake continues to yield high-grade intercepts along a 30-km gold-bearing shear zone. Back in the 1970s, Dunsworth was pondering her future when she had the opportunity to sit down with the head of earth sciences at Saint Mary’s University in her hometown of Halifax. Attracted by the opportunity to work outdoors, she went on to complete a bachelor of science in geology at Saint Mary’s followed by a master’s degree specializing in structural geology at Memorial University in Newfoundland. “I was the only female in the department at Saint Mary’s when I started, but it took me three months to realize that because I was so shy I just did my work.” Dunsworth had been working as a geologist in the private and public sectors throughout Canada and in parts of Europe
GOLD HOUND
LAWRENCE CLARK CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, NEWTRAX TECHNOLOGIES
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arry Clark is an anomaly in the mining business: an executive who started as an underground miner. It was that first job – at a molybdenum mine near Denver in 1978 – that got him hooked. “I loved blowing things up,” he said. “What 20 year old doesn’t?” He went back to school to study engineering, determined to combine mining and his growing fascination with technology. Now almost 60, Clark has experienced the transition from giant mainframe computers to PC workstations, and from 48 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
SHERRY DUNSWORTH VP, EXPLORATION, MARATHON GOLD
and South America for a couple of decades when she encountered the unsampled gold-bearing drill core that led her to develop the largest gold deposit in Eastern Canada. Exploration got underway at Valentine Lake in 2010, a manageable drive from Dunsworth’s home in Pasadena, Newfoundland. She and her team went on to find four near-surface gold deposits that have all the markings of a future mine in a province Dunsworth considers a “privilege” to work in. Virginia Heffernan
clunky laptops to tablets and smartphones. Throughout his more than 30-year career, technology has been a constant focus for Clark, including the nearly two decades he spent as senior director of mining technology at Newmont Mining, and, as of this March, as Newtrax Technologies’ new chief operating officer. In this new capacity, Clark has emerged as a champion for the adoption of technologies that will make mining safer, cleaner and more profitable as the industry changes its tune toward innovation. “The mining industry has finally turned its attitude from one of aversion to technology to the realization that it’s the only way to get beyond the problems we are facing,” he said. Virtually all of these issues, Clark said – the need to dig deeper, increasingly complex metallurgy and elusive social
Christopher Pollon
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innovator
Stephen McIntosh (right) makes a site visit.
STEVE MCINTOSH GROUP EXECUTIVE, GROWTH & INNOVATION RIO TINTO
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io Tinto cleared an important hurdle this May when Australia’s railway regulator gave the go-ahead to the company’s automated rail project, which will carry iron ore
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forward thinker Courtesy of Newtrax
Lawrence Clark (top) at the Colorado School of Mines Engineering Days
from multiple mining operations to ports in the Pilbara region of Western Australia without personnel on the train. It is the latest milestone for the AutoHaul project, one piece of the now 10-year-old “Mine of the Future” program at Rio Tinto that has also seen the roll out of autonomous haul trucks and drill fleets, and the creation of the operations centre in Perth to control this growing automated workforce. The lessons learned from these programs and the technological infrastructure put in place to manage them will be the backbone that supports the expansion of these technologies across the company’s network of operations, developments and as yet undiscovered projects around the world. It is Stephen McIntosh’s task as the lead of Rio Tinto’s Growth and Innovation group to manage this expansion and use evolving technologies to open up new frontiers. The development of the Koodaideri iron ore project in the Pilbara, which the company has dubbed the “intelligent mine” and will decide this year if they are to set in motion, represents an important next step. “It’s digital from the ground up,” said McIntosh. Beyond the implementation of autonomous drilling, haulage and rail transport, “all of the designs are digital, and every single component of this is being built in a 3D Courtesy of Rio Tinto
licenses, among others – revolve around either productivity or safety. These are the two issues Newtrax seeks to address by supplying equipment, software and know-how geared toward tackling the challenges of underground mines. Adopting new technology will also help attract the young, diverse workforce the industry needs to thrive. Clark spends a lot of time talking to young people about technology, aware that things like artificial intelligence and machine learning are powerful lures in attracting future workers. “We can say to kids, not only can you have a career in [cool] technology that is rewarding, but you’ll be able to ensure that we are making the absolute maximum out of every ounce of diesel, every worker-hour underground, and even save lives. These are all fascinating things to that younger generation, which we need so desperately,” said Clark. But what of employment? Will the mass adoption of these technologies mean fewer workers, especially in the kinds of entry-level jobs that enabled Clark to get his start? “There will still be entry-level positions, but fewer and fewer as automation takes hold,” he said. “The days of handheld and manual mining methods are fading into history, so the way I got in the business may disappear. Despite the displacement of low-skilled jobs, humans will still be the ones who design, build, service, commission and decommission these systems. It is important to note that we expect this new workforce to come to the table with curiosity, intelligence and a strong sense of teamwork and collaboration. The fallacy is thinking we are going to need fewer people.”
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model. When those have been constructed, those same models will become the twin for maintenance, to guide the safe and efficient operation of those assets.” Autonomous technology and artificial intelligence will also be deployed in other aspects of operations. “Best practice in data science will underpin this type of mine – advanced data analytics, machine learning and control loop optimization will be embedded from the start,” he said. “We’ll ultimately be able to use external scans of haul trucks and other equipment to complement the operating data that is being generated by the spectrum of sensors on board these vehicles. If a component needs replacing, the new part can be sent to the maintenance bay and be on hand for the mechanics when the machine arrives for service – it’ll be data in real time and a paperless process.” Then, once repairs are complete, McIntosh said, “the mine automation system puts the vehicle back into the load-haul loop. That is really the first time you see the real future, when all of those technologies come together.”
It also falls to him to replenish the company’s reserves with new discoveries. And this is a project where the role of advanced technology is still in its early days, though its potential is immense. McIntosh said the nearly 150-year-old miner has, after more than a decade of work, digitized the bulk of its historical information. It is serendipitous, he noted, that they finished the hard slog of data preparation at a time when artificial intelligence has begun to show such promise for explorers. “Collectively we have over a hundred years of information in our archives spanning more than a hundred countries and a lot of it is unique to us,” he said. McIntosh cited the ability to improve exploration targeting as well as the ability to make quick and informed decisions in the field as the most potent weapons for geologists. Now McIntosh, who began his career as a geologist in the 1980s, has the perspective to appreciate the moment the mining industry is now in and the enviable opportunity to Ryan Bergen stake out a new realm.
MAURA KOLB
sort based on features of interest. She said people in her department spend 80 per cent of their time the conventional way – weeding through data. An easier way to find, filter and compare data would make them much more productive. aura Kolb is more familiar with analyzing rock samples The company is also hoping to use Watson to predict than computer code, but as exploration manager at where deposits are likely to be found in a given data set and Goldcorp’s Red Lake gold mine, she now finds herself teach it to pull data from maps using imaging recognition to in charge of an innovative approach to exploration that better exploit archived data in paper form. involves both. “I think that one of the reaThe project, in partnership with sons this project is so interesting IBM, uses IBM’s Watson artificial is that every exploration team intelligence platform to identify worldwide struggles with being exploration targets at the Ontario able to use all of their data,” mine. Since the project was Kolb said. launched in March 2017 at the So far Kolb’s team has taught Disrupt Mining event at PDAC, Watson to read structural meaGoldcorp says the time it takes to surements from maps, but have process survey data has fallen by not yet advanced to other data 97 per cent. sets. “Being able to go through [our Kolb originally came to data] quickly, that’s something no Ontario to complete her master’s one else can do right now,” said of geology at Lakehead UniverKolb. “We can ask questions of our sity. She worked as a consultant data that we haven’t been able to in in Thunder Bay for a several the past.” years until 2013, when she and The main goal of the project is her husband, also a geologist, to use Watson to help identify took jobs at Goldcorp, just days high-grade areas at Red Lake that after the birth of their first son. were previously overlooked by She was tapped to lead the prohuman eyes. If the project is sucject when it began last year. The cessful, Goldcorp plans to expand IBM has said the project is the technology to other mines. not meant to replace geologists, Kolb said that Goldcorp hopes but to help them do their jobs this project will allow geologists to Maura Kolb (right) with her mother during Family Day at Red better and save them time. quickly query for information and Lake Mine “Unlike the computer, we can’t
EXPLORATION MANAGER, RED LAKE, GOLDCORP
Courtesy of Maura Kolb
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DATA MINER
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Other possible uses for machine learning include everything from remediation to repairs. “There’s a lot of different applications for mining,” Kolb said. “We’ve just started from KEVIN MARTINE an exploration geology side.”
Courtesy of Arizona Mining
read everything in our database and retain it all,” said Kolb. “That supercomputing power is something that will enable geologists to do even more than if they’d just worked here a few years and tried to soak it all in.”
DON TAYLOR COO, ARIZONA MINING
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hen Don Taylor took the helm of Arizona Mining eight years ago, he hoped to satisfy a nagging entrepreneurial urge. He ended up discovering one of the largest lead-zinc deposits in the world. “I had been working for large cap companies and was looking for something a little more entrepreneurial, an opportunity that had some upside. Wildcat Silver (as Arizona Mining was known at the time) fit the bill,” said Taylor, the 2018 recipient of PDAC’s Thayer Lindsley Award for best global discovery. The eponymous Taylor deposit, discovered in 2014 south of Tucson, Arizona, is a carbonate replacement deposit with a Measured and Indicated Resource of more than 100 million short tons (about 90 million metric tonnes) grading 4.1 per cent zinc, 4.3 per cent lead and 2.1 ounces per ton silver. Arizona is currently driving a twin exploration decline into Taylor and expects to deliver a feasibility study in the third quarter of 2018 in preparation for production as early as 2020. The deposit caught the eye of Australian miner South32 Limited, which announced plans to acquire Arizona for US$1.3 billion in mid-June. In a press release, South32 CEO Graham Kerr affirmed the quality of the deposit, calling it “one of the most exciting base metal projects in the industry.” South32 previously owned 17 per cent of Arizona Mining. When Taylor was appointed president in 2010 after exiting his role as vice-president of exploration for Doe Run, the junior was focused on expanding and developing a silvermanganese manto oxide deposit closer to surface. But after compiling airborne geophysics and some regional drill results from the 1970s, Taylor devised a drill program to test the possibility of sulphide mineralization a few hundred metres down dip of the oxide zone. “There wasn’t any one reason, but several small indicators that made a compelling argument to drill,” Taylor said. “We planned five holes, but it was a difficult time to raise money and we didn’t have much in the bank. I’m not sure if he got tired of listening to the story or started to believe it, but our executive chairman Richard Warke relented and put up his own money to drill the holes.” Taylor studied geology in Missouri, culminating in a master’s degree from the University of Missouri at Rolla in 1983. The Midwestern state is known for its carbonate replacement – also known as Mississippi Valley Type – lead-zinc deposits,
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TRAINED EYE so Taylor understood the significance of the find when the first hole he drilled returned coarse-grained galena and sphalerite in altered limestone. He stepped down as president – replaced by former Barrick Gold co-president Jim Gowans – in order to focus his attention on drilling out Taylor and a related zone, Taylor Deeps. Four years later, the zones continue to grow and high-grade copper is showing up in the some of the latest cores. Taylor says the host stratigraphy extends to the south and northeast and there is “tremendous” potential to find another deposit. Although drilling to date has been limited to patented claims, Arizona is in the process of securing permits with the United States Forest Service to drill its unpatented claims, where another 78 targets have been delineated. “I’ve been lucky to be involved in the expansion or discovery of three or four blind deposits in my career,” said Taylor, Virginia Heffernan “but nothing on this scale.” June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 51
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CLOSER CARL GRANT HEAD OF MINE CLOSURE PLANNING, ANGLO AMERICAN
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he highlight of Carl Grant’s career has been obtaining a closure certificate for Alcoa’s first bauxite mine at Jarrahdale in southern Western Australia. “The mine closed in 2001 and we obtained a closure certificate from the government in 2005,” said Grant. “Few people in our industry can say that, but it’s an important achievement to prove to communities that we do what we say we’re going to do.” Grant is now group head of mine closure planning at Anglo American. Since he took on the role in 2014, he and a team of mine closure specialists have been building and implementing Anglo American’s Integrated Closure Planning System (ICPS) across the company’s global portfolio of operations. One of the objectives of the ICPS is to include closure planning in the same software package used for mine planning to enable that software to run a complete life-of-mine scenario. The first ICPS pilot was initiated at the Kolomela iron ore mine in South Africa in 2015. “It ran for 15 months and gen52 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
erated about $30 million of operational savings by utilizing in-pit and shorthaul dumping, rather than taking the waste from the pit all the way up to the elevated waste rock dumps,” said Grant. A lack of information about closure costs and requirements, he said, often means life-of-mine planners make decisions that do not fully consider closure liability. “When the engineers have the closure numbers, they make different decisions,” Grant explained. “For example, there might be an option that is five cents a tonne more expensive from an opex perspective but saves you $50 million on your closure liability.” Anglo American began building the ICPS in late 2014. The system combines the various planning regimes, internal and external requirements, and financial considerations to run life-ofmine scenarios on existing mine planning software platforms. “ICPS tries to minimize closure costs by doing as much closure-related work during the operational phase as possible,” said Grant, “We can do progressive reclamation and optimize the placement of our waste material to minimize the liabilities and risks at closure.” Grant pursued a career in environmental science after growing up in the Western Australian mining town of Kalgoorlie, where he witnessed land disturbance and pollution caused by mining firsthand. Armed with a PhD in fire ecology, Grant honed his skills with bauxite mining company Alcoa before moving east to teach at the University of New England in New South Wales. There he wrote the first course in Australia on ecosystem rehabilitation before returning to Alcoa to carry out research and rehabilitate closed mines in the Jarrah forests of southern Western Australia. In 2010, he joined Anglo American as the head of environment for coal operations in Australia and Canada before transitioning to global head of mine closure planning in 2014, where he immediately began developing the ICPS. A second ICPS pilot project was completed at Drayton coal mine in Australia’s Hunter Valley, and five others have commenced at sites in South Africa, Brazil, and Botswana. Grant and his team hope to complete the pilot projects by mid-2019 and rollout the ICPS across all Anglo American operations by 2021. “Probably the biggest factor was making people aware that they have a role to play in closure,” said Grant. This November he will be taking that message to Santiago, as chair of the second International Congress on Planning for Closure of Mining Kylie Williams Operations.
Courtesy of Vince Gerrie
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SIMPLIFIER
Vince Gerrie (left) with Kore Geosystems senior advisor Chris Drielsma
VINCE GERRIE CEO, KORE GEOSYSTEMS
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ince Gerrie does not like repetition. “Doing the same thing over and over again, mundane and repetitive, really frustrates me,” he explained. “I have a passionate need to develop methods to avoid repetitive tasks.” The two companies he has founded over an impressive 24year career in mining services aim to cull tedious tasks on mine sites and improve operational efficiencies. Both KORE Geosystems and DGI Geoscience streamline operations by collecting and analyzing data to mitigate traditionally time-consuming jobs. Gerrie launched his more recent venture, KORE, in 2015. The company designs hardware, like sensors and data acquisitions systems, that combines data science and artificial intelligence to improve how data is collected and used in mineral exploration. Last year, its smart-drilling technology caught the eye of the judges at Disrupt Mining – a Dragons’ Den-style competition at PDAC that celebrates mining innovation – who crowned it co-winner of the event, and in September the company negotiated a $1-million investment from Goldcorp, the lead competition sponsor. The technology captures and analyzes drill hole data right at the drill rig or immediately after drilling, curtailing the need to dispatch rock samples to a distant laboratory, an expensive and time-consuming process. According to Gerrie, Goldcorp’s investment will help ideas become reality. “The big thing at the moment is the acceleration of technology development,” he said. “It gets frustrating
when you have all these great ideas but don’t have the resources to execute them. Now it’s execution time!” KORE was borne out of discussions at DGI, the drill hole data acquisition, analysis and integration company Gerrie founded in 1997. “After we realized how much value we could extract from data at DGI, we started looking further afield to other data sources that might be useful to clients,” Gerrie explained. The new company was incorporated when they saw “a market to solve problems using data sources above and beyond those DGI provided.” Gerrie formed DGI in his mid-twenties, fresh out of a geoscience degree from the University of Waterloo, inspired by a formative student work placement in the Geological Survey of Canada’s borehole geophysics department. He had travelled the country collecting valuable downhole rock property information, including density, acoustic velocity, resistivity, conductivity, natural gamma ray and magnetic susceptibility. Despite this type of analysis being performed routinely on oil and gas boreholes, it was rare in mining. “The industry was spending lots of money on drilling, but missing an opportunity to collect valuable information,” he said. Gerrie saw an opportunity and set off to the Northwest Territories to offer the service to the diamond industry. DGI grew from there. Although his title remained constant at DGI for 17 years, Gerrie ensured that his responsibilities were constantly evolving with the growth of the company – and expects the same at KORE. “A big motivator for [company] growth for me is not necessarily financial gain,” he said, “but the challenge of solving new problems and taking on new roles and responsibilities.” Cecilia Keating June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 53
The
Courtesy of Ministerio de Defensa del Perú
GREEN PRESIDENT
MARTÍN VIZCARRA PRESIDENT OF PERU
A
ttendees at the PDAC convention in early March should not be faulted for failing to recognize the man who would soon be the president of Peru. Most Peruvians did not know Martín Vizcarra’s name three months ago, either – the then-ambassador to Canada and a former governor of a small region was unknown to 81 per cent of the country, according to a March poll. An engineer by trade, Vizcarra has been vocal in his support of the mining industry, but he has also called for it to play a larger social role. “We will demonstrate to the investors of the world that social and environmentally responsible mining can be developed in Peru,” he tweeted in February as he prepared for PDAC. At the time, Vizcarra was the vice-president, a mostly titular role in Peru, as well as an ambassador. On March 23, two weeks after PDAC, he replaced former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who resigned following a corruption scandal. Vizcarra’s vow to clamp down on graft has helped reassure 54 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
investors who were spooked by Kuczynski’s scandal; the Peruvian sol has recovered since he took office, after the currency lagged during the political upheaval. Mining makes up 10 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product and 60 per cent of its exports, and Peru has billions of dollars worth of mining projects in the development stage awaiting regulatory approval. Newmont’s stalled Conga mine proposal and Southern Copper’s Tia Maria project have both faced years of red tape and court challenges. Protests at operational and development sites have been known to turn violent. Protesters often cite fears about water contamination and noise as key points of contention. Local and environmental groups opposed to development have lobbied the new president to keep to his policy of sustainability in government. Vizcarra cancelled contracts for oil exploration with U.K.-based Tullow Oil in May over concerns from coastal communities about the impact of the activity, according to Reuters. The contracts had been approved by Kuczynski just hours before his resignation. Vizcarra has denounced illegal mining projects and promised to crack down on unlicensed operators. In April, the president also passed a framework law for addressing climate change in the country, the first such law in South America designed to act on the commitments on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change mitigation, adaptation and finance laid out in the 2015 Paris climate accord. But Vizcarra faces an opposition-controlled congress as well as critics outside the government who denounce his longtime support for Kuczynski. The finance minister quit in early June after protests broke out in response to his decision to raise taxes on fuel. Meanwhile, another of his ministers has already been forced to resign for an unrelated scandal. Yet the once low-profile politician has also shown a more common touch by committing to visit poorer outlying regions every week, compared to Kuczynski, who rarely left the capital. He has said he intends to visit all 25 of Peru’s regions in his first six months in office. When he visited Cajamarca, one of the poorest provinces in the country and home to several major mines, including Newmont’s Yanacocha mine and stalled Conga project, he tweeted “Cajamarca, a region with so much richness and enormous development potential in several sectors, cannot record poverty rates.” He also promised to listen to feedback from local leaders after meeting with them. “[We] have made the decision to promote projects that are socially and environmentally responsible. I am going to pay special attention to this region and its demands,” he said in another tweet. Vizcarra’s term will last until 2021. He has already said he Kevin Martine will not run again.
C
12
Names to Know 1898
The first officers and council members of CIM were powerhouses in the Canadian and global mining industries, with a vision for the future. All were members of provincial mining organizations, but they wanted to do more. They formed the national institute in 1898 to better facilitate the exchange of ideas, technological advancements and best practices in the sector among themselves and with their international counterparts. Compiled by Elle Crosby
John E. Hardman An American by birth, Hardman was a mining engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He moved to Nova Scotia in 1883 to work in the Oldham and West Waverley gold districts near Halifax. Ten years later, he helped to establish the Mining Society of Nova Scotia and served as its first president in 1894. He was a renowned speaker and went to Montreal as a lecturer at McGill University. While in Montreal he helped to organize the formation of CIM and became its first president in 1898.
Benjamin Taylor A. Bell Originally from Scotland, Bell arrived in Canada in 1882 and moved around the country working several jobs before starting to write at the Canadian Mining Review in 1887. Bell was an integral figure in the formation of the Mining Society of Nova Scotia, the General Mining Association of the Province of Quebec, the Ontario Mining Institute and the British Columbia Association of Mining Engineers. With his ties to leaders in all of these regions, he was a driving force in the formation of CIM and he served as the Institute’s secretary from 1898 until his sudden death in 1904.
Charles Fergie Fergie immigrated to Canada from England in 1887 to manage the Intercolonial Coal Mining Company in Westville, Nova Scotia. He was the president of the Mining Society of Nova Scotia from 1898 to 1900 and served as president of CIM from 1901 to 1903. He would later go on to serve as vice-president of the Institute from 1914 to 1917.
June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 55
IN DEEPAND ON TRACK
A series of electric-powered drive stations, such as the one shown here, propel trains filled with ore up from the Goldex Deep 1 deposit to a transfer station where it is then hoisted to the surface.
To access the gold far below the surface at its Goldex mine without spending a mint, Agnico Eagle gave an innovative haulage system the opportunity to prove its worth
“N
By Kelsey Rolfe
ow here comes the best part. The dump loop,” said David Paquette, the general manager of maintenance at the Goldex mine just outside Val-d’Or, Quebec. Standing at the terminus point of its Rail-Veyor, a light rail electrically powered ore haulage system, Paquette gestured to a 360-degree loop of rail track. The Rail-Veyor, after travelling along a three-kilometre track from the lowest part of Goldex, unloads the ore it is carrying on the loop. “It’s like La Ronde.” 56 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
The description is quite apt – the dump loop looks like an industrial version of the loop de loop of a roller coaster at the Montreal theme park. Except that the ride at La Ronde does not unceremoniously drop its passengers out of the vehicle while they are suspended upside down three-quarters of a kilometre underground. The Rail-Veyor has been hauling ore at Goldex since September last year, and is the first full-scale underground deployment of the technology in North America. The technology was
project profile
Courtesy of Agnico Eagle
installed to bring ore from the mine’s Deep 1 deposit closer to surface – and without it the deposit would not have been economically viable to mine, due to its grade (currently 1.59 grams per tonne) and location. Deep 1 has added seven years to Goldex’s mine life, extending it to 2025. “Because we have a low-grade deposit here, we have to have a high throughput,” said Christian Lessard, Goldex’s maintenance superintendent. “You can have high production with the hoist and the Rail-Veyor.” The goal at Goldex is to keep site costs below $40 per tonne mined. Since its commissioning, the Rail-Veyor has, as of June, hauled a total of 439,755 tonnes of ore from Deep 1, at a rate of 2,400 tonnes per day. The mine is currently ramping up to the Rail-Veyor’s total capacity of 6,000 tonnes per day, which they hope to reach by 2019, Paquette said. Down at the 115 level of Deep 1, more than a kilometre underground, ore gets dumped into a grizzly, and a rock-breaking room handles oversize rocks. A vibrating feeder deposits material into one of the RailVeyor rail cars. From there, the remote-controlled train follows a circuitous track up an incline with a 17 per cent grade, from its starting point at the 1,250-metre level up to the 730-metre level. Along the way it is pushed forward by foam-filled tires at 91 drive stations that are spaced evenly along the track. The tires propel the Rail-Veyor forward by turning against the side plates of the rail cars. Loaded trains travel up to the unload point at three metres per second and, once emptied, descend at 3.5 m/s. To prevent rocks from sliding off the lead rail car and falling on the track, loading begins at the second car. When it reaches the dump loop, the train cruises over the top and, as it turns upside down, drops the ore into a silo. From there, the emptied Rail-Veyor returns to the starting point, and the ore is hoisted to the surface.
THE ROAD TO DEEP 1
The mineralization that became the Deep 1 zone was discovered in 2007, located underneath the Goldex Extension Zone (GEZ) that Agnico was mining, and the company commenced drilling work to determine what it had. However, before releasing a resource estimate for the Deep zone, Agnico closed Goldex three years after it opened, due to poor rock stability above the GEZ, and above where work on the Deep zone was taking place. But a little less than a year later, in July 2012, the company approved development of the M and E satellite zones at Goldex, where rock was more stable,
and reopened the mine in 2013. The GEZ has been written off completely as too dangerous to mine. As work resumed at Goldex, the team started looking to develop Deep 1, which was greenlit by Agnico in July 2015 and began commercial production last August. They needed to extend the existing hoisting system from the GEZ to haul ore from the lower deposit, and considered multiple options, including the Rail-Veyor. “The key for [the Goldex team] was to see if we could reduce their costs and, at the same time, extend the mine life by being able to go deeper without adding additional ventilation,” said Frank Ward, the vice-president of sales and marketing at Rail Veyor Technologies Global, the Sudbury, Ontario-based company behind the Rail-Veyor. The team found that the technology would be cheaper to operate than haul trucks and would not require additional ventilation. It could also be constructed around curves to avoid areas of unstable ground, unlike a conveyor. “We experienced geotechnical issues in the past when we started operating in the GEZ,” Lessard said, “So it’s a priority here at Goldex to put the excavation in the best available rock.” The technology, Lessard noted, also had the added benefit of allowing the team to reuse existing exploration drifts. “We were able to use those excavations with the Rail-Veyor, so we saved a lot in terms of development costs,” Lessard said. About a quarter of the system was installed along existing 4.5 metrewide drifts, which the company widened to 5.8 metres to allow a tractor to drive alongside the rail line. “You could use a Rail-Veyor in a smaller ramp, but in terms of maintenance and availability, we opted for a wider ramp,” he added. And with barriers around the drifts and access control to prevent harm to workers, Lessard said the Rail-Veyor also has safety benefits. The system automatically shuts down if workers pass the barrier. It also produces zero emissions. “There’s no heat and dust coming from diesel,” Lessard said. “It’s a health and safety advantage.” Perhaps the biggest boon is that the Rail-Veyor is able to handle larger rocks than a conveyor. This eliminated the need to install a crusher, reducing the construction phase at Deep 1 by six months.
MANAGING RISKS
Any new technology comes with risks. The biggest concern around installing the Rail-Veyor, Lessard said, was the possibility the train could go off the tracks, especially at such a steep incline. “We didn’t know what would be the rate of derailment,” he said. “We didn’t know really how to repair derailment.” To mitigate that challenge, they added the safety system and barriers, and have procedures in place for putting the train on track, Paquette said. The size of the train also presents maintenance challenges. The Rail-Veyor has 182 tires at its 91 drive stations, and more than 400 train cars – 68 on each of six trains – Paquette said. The company has installed sensors for preventative maintenance, and has a large inventory of spare parts to prevent against unexpected failures. Paquette said maintenance staff June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 57
Courtesy of Agnico Eagle
Courtesy of Agnico Eagle
Kelsey Rolfe
Courtesy of Agnico Eagle
Clockwise from top right: The system is monitored remotely and access to the rail line is limited to protect personnel; The train rolls through a loop in the track to empty its load; The individual cars of the transport system have only side walls, so a single train forms one long trough that can bend around corners; The Deep 1 deposit is mined using long-hole stoping with cemented paste backfill.
58 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
project profile also regularly check the trains and drive stations to make sure there are no issues. “Since we are the first operator [using Rail-Veyor] we are more careful,” Paquette said. “If we run the Rail-Veyor for five, ten years, we will reduce the inspection. But for the moment we are putting more energy into that kind of stuff than usual.” Lessard said they are also working to resolve an issue with the tires at the drive stations, which are producing a black “goo” that affects the friction between the tires and the rail cars’ side plates. Agnico is currently working with Rail-Veyor and multiple other companies on a test bench in Sudbury to find a better tire.
GATHERING SPEED
The path to the first underground deployment of the RailVeyor in North America has been a long one. The first iteration of the Rail-Veyor was installed in South Africa at Harmony Gold’s Phakisa mine about 10 years ago. According to Ward, after the death of Rail-Veyor’s owner, Risto Laamanen, in 2009, his family struggled to manage the business, and between 2010 and 2011, new investors helped to restart and refinance the company.
“Up to 2015, a lot of time was spent to improve the RailVeyor to become more reliable, get the costs down and manufacture it more along automotive standards rather than just fabricate it in a job-shop fashion. All of this was to get it commercially ready for today’s improving mining market.” Ward said. Rail-Veyor is now installing a surface system at a Venezuela petroleum coke facility and another system underground at a lead mine in southeast Missouri. Ward said it used to be “a struggle to generate an inquiry” from potential customers, but now the news is spreading and the pace of inquiries has increased. “We’re seeing a lot of interest internationally, as well as in North America,” he said. As for Goldex, Lessard said that one of the major selling points of the Rail-Veyor was that it was expandable. Agnico is currently considering developing other zones at Goldex – the first test stope in the South zone is expected to be in place in June, and the company is spending millions this year on drilling at Deep 2 and 3. “The South zone is close to Deep 1, and it’s a zone that could use the existing installation,” Lessard said. “If we get a ‘yes’ to develop Deep 2, we could potentially add some drive stations and be able to use it there, too.” CIM
Strategic Mine Planning with New Digital Technologies, Risk Management and Mineral Value Chains
At the time of a continuing rebound of metal markets, learn how the application of new digital technologies that can add substantial value to strategic mine planning and asset valuation. The new technologies and related tools integrate technical risk management while capitalizing on the synergies amongst the elements of mineral value chains through their simultaneous optimization – from mines to products to markets. INSTRUCTORS Roussos Dimitrakopoulos, McGill University, Canada and Ryan Goodfellow, Newmont Mining Corporation, USA • DATE September 19-21, 2018 • LOCATION Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Geostatistical Mineral Resource Estimation and Meeting the New Regulatory Environment: Step by Step from Sampling to Grade Control
This course is designed according to the latest regulations on public reporting of Mineral Resources. It aims at showing how state-of-the-art statistical and geostatistical techniques help answering the requirements of those regulations in an objective and reproducible manner. A particular emphasis is put on understanding sampling and estimation errors and how to assign levels of estimation confidence through the application of resource classification fundamentals. In addition to a solid introduction to mining geostatistics this course provides a comprehensive overview of industry’s best practices in the broader field of Mineral Resource estimation. INSTRUCTORS Georges Verly, Wood, Canada and Roussos Dimitrakopoulos, McGill University, Canada • DATE September 24-28, 2018 • LOCATION Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Cash Flow Evaluations for Mineral Projects
The purpose of the course is to familiarize the participant with the form and content of discounted cash flow evaluations as they are used in the mineral industry for studies and projects. The course focuses on several aspects of mineral project evaluations: the data and calculations required for a mineral project cash flow, the assessment of the viability (economics) of a mining project, and risk assessment. INSTRUCTORS Lawrence Devon, Lawrence, Devon, Smith & Associates, Canada • DATE November 6-8, 2018 • LOCATION Montreal, Quebec, Canada
June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 59
Unnecessary interruptions Improved material handling the product of smarter modelling, design and monitoring
Courtesy of Conveyor Belt Gateway
By Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco
The monitoring technology of the CBGuard system generates a constant video feed of a scan that penetrates the conveyor belt and notifies the operator of problems.
ow ore journeys from mine to mill through unglamorous bins, chutes and conveyors is no less important for improving efficiencies and productivity than the ore’s highly instrumented and automated destination. Bulk material handling experts point out that as more miners invest in automation and the optimization of big-ticket equipment, it becomes more critical to pay attention to the design and maintenance of transfer and storage systems to ensure a predictable and reliable feed to the mill. There is good news, with new technologies making it possible for mining companies to monitor their equipment in real time to reduce downtime and maintenance costs. And there is also increasingly herculean computational power that is enabling a 40-year-old technique, discrete element method (DEM) analysis, to be a much faster and accurate design for both new and existing material handling systems.
H
There is a disconnect “Something that one of my clients once said really resonated with me,” said Martin Esaki, vice-president of bulk material engineering firm Jenike & Johanson in Toronto. “He said, ‘People look at the process flow diagrams and tend to underestimate the importance of the lines connecting the multimillion dollar components 60 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
Courtesy of Bulk Materials Engineering Australia
bulk material handling
A before and after depiction of a transfer chute redesigned using DEM.
such as the crusher, kilns and mills. The lines represent mundane items such as belt conveyors or transfer chutes. These, however, when poorly designed, can cripple a plant.’ I’ve spent a lot of time fixing designed-in problems such as plugged or worn out chutes, belt wear and underpowered equipment.” Miners must complement technology with design. For example, operations can optimize their conveyor belts to run at higher speeds in order to feed their state-of-the-art mills, but design flaws in chutes and hoppers can quickly cancel out that work. “If flow problems result in an upstream chute or hopper operating at a lower rate or at its design rate only for a fraction of the time, the system’s throughput rate will be limited, even if the belt is optimized to handle much higher rates” said Tracy Holmes, president at Jenike & Johanson. Lou Bruno, executive director of central Canada operations at BBA, notes a further issue. When equipment downstream has been automated and optimized, he said, “and you speed up the discharge from the bin to get more material, all of a sudden you can get a big avalanche of ore because the bin doesn’t operate in a predictable flow pattern.” “Even in this digital age, the laws of physics are not negotiable,” said Bruno. “There is only so much instrumentation can do to improve a bad situation if the understanding of the physics were wrong to begin with,” he said. “When your mechanical design is good, you can do a lot of good things with instrumentation. But when the mechanical design is deficient, you are limiting the benefits of what you can do with automation.”
The mechanics of flow “The most common mechanical problems related to bulk material handling these days can be traced to improperly designed bins and chutes. A lot of people don’t understand how to design them,” Bruno said. “As a result they don’t flow properly, predictably and reliably. And if the bin stops flowing then the whole mill doesn’t get enough material, and that’s a big problem.”
A major cause of poor design is that many engineers are not aware of the critical step of testing the ore from the site to establish the material’s properties and flow characteristics. “When you define the flow characteristics, you get the information you need to properly design a bin or chute specifically for the material’s flow properties so that the material will flow reliably and predictably,” said Bruno. Many older operations use funnel flow bins, which have flatter bottoms than newer steeper-sloped mass flow bins, and tend to result in material segregation, in which the coarser material flows down to the edges and the finer material collects in the centre. The resulting particle size distribution to the mill will be highly variable in a funnel flow pattern and this could upset a “finely tuned” mill operation, Bruno explained. A funnel flow pattern can also lead to the formation of an interlocking arch – or bridge – that results in a complete blockage and thus considerable downtime. “Sometimes you spend days trying to clear an arch,” he said. Another issue with a funnel flow pattern of a cohesive ore in a bin is the formation of what is known as a stable rathole, which can starve a mill of feed. “It’s like a big open pipe that goes all the way up the bin,” said Bruno. “All you may get is the material going through the rathole as a chute, therefore losing many tonnes of live capacity in the bin. A mass flow or expanded flow design would avoid problems associated with flow interruptions and material segregation, and would maximize the benefits of automation.” According to Bruno, similar problems also occur with stockpiles and hoppers. “Properly designed withdrawal mass flow hoppers and feeders, strategically placed under the pile, can eliminate the formation of stable ratholes or stable arches and expand the flow pattern to maximize live storage capacity of the stockpile,” he said. Design problems also occur with chutes, and material flow properties and characterization can be used for mathematical modelling to select the right angle, lining and shape of the chute so the bulk material will flow reliably and predictably. June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 61
Better designs
Our history in photos
Tell us your story at 120.cim.org
1919: A barman at work in the Granby mines, Phoenix, British Columbia, “where copper was king”. The Phoenix mine comprised both an underground mine and open pit mine. The operation maintained a completely unsupported “show stope” with dimensions of 80 feet high, 105 feet wide, and 400 feet long.
DEM has been around since the 1970s but it is only in the last decade that the software modelling technology has come to be widely used by engineers to model and understand complex bulk material behaviour. That is thanks to the dramatic explosion in today’s computational power. “We can now model bigger and more complicated systems,” said Andrew Grima, a senior design engineer at Bulk Materials Engineering Australia at the University of Wollongong, which partners with U.K.-based DEM Solutions. Esaki from Jenike & Johanson, which has developed its own DEM software, explains the complexity of the technology. “With DEM you are trying to mimic the behaviour of realworld bulk material, which in general consists of billions and billions of minute particles interacting with each other through complex forces, using a limited number of ‘large’ particles interacting through simplified contact force models. You try to mathematically formulate simplified interaction force models, at a macroscopic level, to best duplicate the behaviour of real bulk material consisting of microscopic particles governed by complex interaction forces that are sometimes only relevant at a microscopic level.” The analysis offers insight into potential designs, even if the flows of material are complex, said Grima. It also lets engineers compare how the material will behave in different scenarios, and, he added, it “allows engineers to be proactive about getting things right the first time with no surprises.” The end result is more reliable operations. According to Holmes, it also means that “a whole new class of problems – the ones involving moving mechanical equipment such as bucket wheel reclaimers or rail car dumpers – can now be approached in a much more scientific way, instead of relying mainly on guesswork, experience or who can be most convincing.” The technology is a powerful tool that replaces scale modelling and the many assumptions it requires engineers to make when designing conveyor systems and transfer points. “When we do this in the DEM 3D environment the amount of information you can extract from these systems is extensive,” said Grima. “It provides a lot more insights for engineers. Working on a desktop, you can make modifications easily. When we’re modifying transfer systems we can identify potential problems and try to find the best solution and validate it by DEM before we go and manufacture and implement these design changes.” There is one caveat: the software requires material flow characteristics tests and calibration with actual material from the site to do its job well, something that was not always done in the past. “The DEM software will run based on whatever you give it,” said Holmes. “So it’s very important that you calibrate with real-world material.”
Belt monitoring Better-designed and calibrated bins, chutes and conveyor systems will help reduce unnecessary wear on the conveyor belt and lengthen the life of the belts. But even under ideal conditions, things can go wrong. The costs can run in the hun62 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
bulk material handling
dreds of thousands of dollars per hour during an unforeseen shutdown. That is why much attention has been put into innovations to help monitor conveyor health and allow for early detection of problems. Emerson, for example, has developed technology that monitors such critical conveyor components as drives, pulleys and bearings in real time. Phoenix Extreme Conveyor Belt Solutions has created a suite of belt monitoring systems, including its more recent addition Phoenoguard PX system. Permanently installed on the lower run of the belt, the system scans the surface, detecting everything from incremental damage, including rips and splice integrity, to cover rubber damage and belt alignment. It also detects cable damage using magnetic imaging technology. “The cables are the strength,â€? said Brad Baber, sales manager with Phoenix. “They’re what convey the material, so you want to do whatever you can to protect the cables from any damage. If there’s a cable missing or broken, the system will actually pick it up.â€? CBG Conveyor Belt Gateway in Germany is offering the CBGuard system, which monitors conveyor belts and generates a constant video feed. “At any point in time, you know exactly the condition of every component in your belt,â€? said Bernd KĂźsel, the company’s president. There are two incidents in which the system will automatically stop the conveyor: if it detects that a splice is opening or
the belt is being ripped. “Otherwise, whenever there is something above a certain threshold, the system will notify the user by a multimedia messaging service notification,â€? said KĂźsel. The user can then review the video and zoom in on the image of the problem area to examine a highly detailed photograph of that point. Not only does the system eliminate the need for shutting down the belt for visual inspections – and catch all the components beneath the surface that such inspections can miss – it also means “you can let your belt run to its real limit, when the belt is genuinely worn out,â€? said KĂźsel. “Many users don’t realize they replace the belts much too early because they can’t take any risk in something going wrong, even though the belt might be fine.â€? The system also stores all the scanned video data, something that appealed to one original equipment manufacturer who is using it to research patterns to improve their systems – and could potentially be employed by mining operations to do the same. Today’s tools to improve material handling performance are more powerful than ever. However, when each way station, transfer point and conveyer along the line has its own unique constraints, one solution alone may not be enough to keep things moving smoothly. A steady flow of material is a careful blend of design and technology. CIM
June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 63
SECTION
FRANCOPHONE JUIN/JUILLET 2018
65 Lettre de l’éditeur 66 Mot du président article de fond
67 Notre dossier annuel consacré à la fine fleur de l’industrie minière
74 Pour accéder à l’or se trouvant sous terre à sa mine Goldex sans dépenser une fortune, Agnico Eagle Par Ryan Bergen, Virginia Heffernan, Cecilia Keating, Kevin Martine, Christopher Pollon et Kylie Williams
a donné sa chance à un système de transport innovant Par Kelsey Rolfe
Nous publions progressivement sur notre site Internet les articles du CIM Magazine en version française.
lettre de l’éditeur
Des échantillons pris au hasard Lorsque l’ICM a vu le jour il y a 120 ans au mois de juin, ses principaux objectifs étaient
Notre histoire en photos
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« de promouvoir... la production économique de minéraux et de métaux précieux au moyen de rencontres s’articulant autour de la lecture de document techniques et de discussions les concernant, de diffuser ultérieurement ces informations... par le biais de publications, [et de] créer une bibliothèque de référence centralisée ainsi qu’un siège social aux fins de cette organisation. »
120.cim.org/fr
L’un des principaux services proposés par l’institut était une salle de lecture où les membres pouvaient consulter des cartes, des documents et des levés géologiques du Canada et d’ailleurs. Quiconque souhaitait utiliser ces ressources pouvait se présenter à l’hôtel Windsor situé dans la rue Peel à Montréal avec une preuve de son adhésion, du lundi au vendredi entre 10 heures et 18 heures. Certains de ces volumes se trouvent encore aujourd’hui dans nos bureaux. Nous encourageons les membres curieux à venir découvrir et explorer ces documents aux mêmes horaires, s’ils le souhaitent. Je me ferais un plaisir de vous faire une visite guidée des lieux, mais je ne me fais pas d’illusions. Le fait qu’un pays de la taille du Canada soit desservi par un seul et unique lieu est totalement absurde, et cela l’était d’autant plus il y a 120 ans lorsque nous ne disposions ni des transports ni des télécommunications pour nous faciliter la vie comme c’est le cas aujourd’hui. À cette époque, tout comme aujourd’hui, ce sont les personnes d’est en ouest et du nord au sud du Canada qui ont fait de l’institut ce qu’il est devenu. Le réseau ferroviaire transcontinental a renforcé ce lien, et c’est grâce au charbon exploité à tous les arrêts le long de ces rails que les messages pouvaient être transmis aux divers membres, éparpillés aux quatre coins du territoire, souhaitant s’informer des tous derniers développements au sein de l’industrie. L’histoire de l’ICM a été décrite en détail dans l’ouvrage Pride and Vision d’E. Tina Crossfield, qui célèbre le centenaire de l’ICM. L’ouvrage de John E. Udd, intitulé A Century of Achievement et publié en 2000, inscrit l’ICM au cœur d’un tissu narratif plus vaste du développement des industries des minéraux du pays. Dans cette édition consacrée à l’anniversaire de l’institut, nous souhaitions partager avec vous certains des documents importants qui constituent les premières ébauches de l’histoire de l’ICM et évoquent son lien étroit avec celle du pays. Nous avons recueilli dans nos archives des échantillons qui capturent le style, le ton et les préoccupations de l’institut depuis sa création. Vous les trouverez parsemés dans ces pages ; et si vous souhaitez explorer davantage, n’hésitez pas à consulter notre site Internet dédié au 120e anniversaire de l’ICM, qui saura vous offrir une collection exhaustive de photos de personnes et d’exploitations au fil des ans. Nous vous invitons à faire vos propres contributions à ce projet collectif et durable qu’est l’ICM.
1919: Un barman au travail aux mines Granby, à Phoenix, en Colombie-Britannique, « où le cuivre était roi ». La mine Phoenix comprenait une mine souterraine et une mine à ciel ouvert. La mine a maintenu une chambre de type « chantier d’extraction » de 80 pieds de haut, 105 pieds de large et 400 pieds de long.
Ryan Bergen, Rédacteur en chef editor@cim.org @Ryan_CIM_Mag
June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 65
mot de la présidente
Retour vers le futur : tirons des enseignements des grandes personnalités de notre industrie « Les géants de notre industrie ont rapidement compris l’importance de la collaboration »
ette édition du CIM Magazine met à l’honneur des personnalités influentes de notre industrie, aussi j’ai pensé que s’imposait un retour en arrière sur les grands chefs de file de notre secteur afin que nous tirions les enseignements nécessaires à notre cheminement vers l’avenir. J’ai récemment eu l’occasion de lire l’ouvrage de Norman B. Keevil, intitulé Never Rest on Your Ores. Dans cet ouvrage, M. Keevil, un homme à la carrière exceptionnelle en tant que géoscientifique, innovateur et entrepreneur minier, partage des récits passionnants sur l’avènement de la société minière la plus diversifiée du Canada, Teck Resources. Comme c’est le cas avec beaucoup de sociétés prospères et de grands projets, Teck n’est pas le fruit des efforts de quelques individus, mais plutôt d’un engagement et d’un travail d’équipe. Les géants de notre industrie ont rapidement compris l’importance de la collaboration ; d’après M. Keevil, la volonté de transmettre et d’échanger des idées renforce incontestablement le résultat final. Selon lui, sans l’intervention de personnes dévouées, un riche corps minéralisé et un appui financier important ne suffiront pas. Peter Munk, fondateur de Barrick Gold et philanthrope reconnu, est décédé en mars dernier ; tout comme M. Keevil, il croyait énormément en la bonne volonté des gens et les partenariats solides. Le succès de M. Munk était en grande partie le fruit des relations qu’il avait établies. À l’instar d’autres confrères, il comprenait la valeur durable des rapprochements avec la société civile. Il a légué un héritage précieux à notre secteur, mais également à la communauté par le biais de ses nombreuses contributions, telles que la Munk School of Global Affairs (l’école Munk des affaires internationales) de l’université de Toronto, et le Peter Munk Cardiac Centre (PMCC, le centre Peter Munk dédié aux pathologies du cœur) à Toronto. Les plus récents membres intronisés au Temple de la renommée du secteur minier canadien (TRSMC) prônent des valeurs et des qualités semblables, que Terry MacGibbon (intronisé au TRSMC et fondateur de FNX Mining, Torex Gold Resources, TMAC Resources et INV Metals) résumait avec éloquence en 2018 comme les « trois P de la réussite » : persévérance, patience et passion. Lui aussi reconnaissait la force des collaborations respectueuses, diversifiées et inclusives. Nombre des sentiments partagés par ces chefs de file sont l’essence même de l’ICM et des relations que l’institut entretient avec ses membres, de l’importance qu’il accorde à la création de réseaux et aux événements qu’il organise et auxquels il prend part. La transformation que connaît actuellement l’ICM viendra renforcer ces valeurs en créant des réseaux et des communautés solides, et en amplifiant les contributions partagées et la propriété collective. Les chefs de file d’hier et de demain sont bien conscients de la valeur de la réciprocité, des rapports symbiotiques et des relations. J’espère que ce numéro du CIM Magazine vous encouragera à réfléchir aux valeurs et aux caractéristiques propres à tous les formidables chefs de file qui composent notre industrie.
C
Janice Zinck Présidente de l’ICM 66 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
LES NOMS À
CONNAÎTRE 2018 Compilé par Ryan Bergen, Virginia Heffernan, Cecilia Keating, Kevin Martine, Christopher Pollon et Kylie Williams
L’industrie a passé un cap. La « transformation numérique », est devenue une réalité. Nous n’avons que l’embarras du choix au niveau des thèmes à traiter, venant confirmer l’ampleur de l’adoption de la technologie. Dans la liste cette année figurent aussi des chefs de file qui montrent la voie à suivre en matière d’exploration, de responsabilité sociale et d’exploitation minière durable, des thèmes essentiels à l’avenir de notre industrie. l’architecte
KALEV RUBERG Jon Benjamin Photography
VP, DIGITAL SYSTEMS, TECK RESOURCES
F
ort d’une expérience dans les milieux universitaire et gouvernemental, dans le secteur privé, et même dans la création d’une entreprise en démarrage, Kalev Ruberg a intégré le secteur minier relativement tard dans sa carrière. Lorsqu’il a rejoint l’industrie il y a 12 ans, il y a trouvé un « paysage très instable » du point de vue des systèmes technologiques. « Si le développement indépendant peut entraîner une réussite ponctuelle, faire preuve d’esprit d’entreprise et travailler de manière cloisonnée comptent parmi les plus grandes difficultés que nous rencontrons tous », déclarait M. Ruberg. « Nous devons régir la façon dont l’innovation se fraye un chemin au sein de la production. En termes d’innovation, le succès que nous avons rencontré à Teck s’explique par notre approche très disciplinée fondée sur des plateformes, car elle fait preuve d’une endurance certaine. » M. Ruberg a rejoint Teck en 2006 en tant que directeur des systèmes d’information et a été nommé vice-président
de Teck Digital Systems en décembre dernier. L’un des thèmes qui revient souvent dans sa carrière très diversifiée est la conception de systèmes qui relient le comportement humain et la technologie. À la fin des années 1970, M. Ruberg a obtenu sa maîtrise d’architecture au Massachusetts Institute of Technology, où il se servait de machines pour optimiser la conception architecturale afin d’obtenir un meilleur rendement énergétique. Il a étudié sous la direction du renommé Pr Nicholas Negroponte, fondateur du MIT Media Lab, le célèbre laboratoire du MIT dédié aux projets de recherche qui associent multimédias, conception et technologie où sont nées les technologies à l’origine de la révolution numérique. Au sein de ce qui est aujourd’hui le National Institute of Standards and Technology, il a travaillé sur la conception de bâtiments intelligents à bon rendement énergétique, puis a enseigné au Georgia Institute of Technology les systèmes fondés sur les connaissances et la conception assistée par ordinateur (CAO). Il a ensuite passé huit ans au conseil national de recherches du Canada (CNRC), où il a développé un système permettant d’utiliser l’intelligence artificielle (IA) pour diagnostiquer des problèmes dans les bâtiments ; plus tard, il a rejoint IBM, où il a contribué à la construction du « plus grand système de commande basé sur les objets en temps réel pour la fabrication de circuits électroniques ». Pour changer de cadre, M. Ruberg a poursuivi pendant deux années au sein du gouvernement du Manitoba en tant que sous-ministre adjoint et directeur des systèmes June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 67
l’équipe de technologie et d’innovation, dirigée par Greg Brouwer, et avec l’équipe des opérations, dirigée par Shehzad Bharmal, afin de mettre au point des capteurs installés sur les pelles qui séparent le minerai des stériles, et un projet pilote de six camions de transport autonomes prévu pour la fin de l’année. La relation complexe entre les personnes et la technologie reste aujourd’hui au cœur des travaux de M. Ruberg à Teck. Sa priorité est de « créer une équipe capable de mener des travaux d’analytique de manière à les tisser dans la structure même de nos activités », tout en éduquant dans le même temps des personnes qui « font preuve de réflexion à l’échelle du système et trouvent l’équilibre nécessaire entre cette démarche et les perKylie Williams sonnes disposant de grandes connaissances ».
LA dÉnicheuse d’or
dans certaines régions d’Europe et d’Amérique du Sud lorsqu’elle a découvert ces carottes de sondage non échantillonnées contenant de l’or, qui l’ont amené à exploiter le plus grand gisement aurifère de l’est du Canada. En 2010, l’exploration commençait à Valentine Lake, un trajet réalisable depuis Pasadena (TerreNeuve-et-Labrador) où vit maintenant Mme Dunsworth. Avec l’aide de son équipe, elle a découvert quatre gisements aurifères subaffleurants qui présentent toutes les caractéristiques d’une future mine potentielle dans cette province où elle se dit « privilégiée » de travailler. Virginia Heffernan
SHERRY DUNSWORTH VP, EXPLORATION, MARATHON GOLD
E
n 2006, Sherry Dunsworth, alors conseillère pour le projet Valentine Lake dans l’ouest de la province de TerreNeuve-et-Labrador pour Mountain Lake Resources, découvrait plusieurs rangées de carottes de sondage qui n’avaient jamais été échantillonnées. En s’approchant, cette spécialiste en géologie structurale avait constaté que la carotte présentait des veines extensionnelles et de l’or visible. « Cette découverte est vraiment restée ancrée dans ma tête », déclarait Mme Dunsworth, qui expliquait avoir alors reconnu des filons de quartz-tourmaline semblables à ceux qui caractérisent les gisements aurifères de la ceinture de l’Abitibi, dans le centre du Canada. Aujourd’hui, elle est première vice-présidente de l’exploration chez Marathon Gold, désormais propriétaire à 100 % de ce projet de 240 kilomètres carrés après son acquisition de Mountain Lake en 2012. En mai, la société a publié une évaluation économique préliminaire qui prévoit une durée de vie de la mine de 11 ans, avec une production moyenne de 188 500 onces par an pour des coûts nécessaires au maintien de la production de 595 dollars américains l’once. Valentine Lake continue de produire des interceptions à haute teneur le long d’une zone de cisaillement de 30 km contenant de l’or. Dans les années 1970, Mme Dunsworth, qui envisageait alors sa future carrière, avait eu une conversation avec le responsable du département des sciences de la Terre de l’université Saint Mary’s à Halifax, sa ville natale. Attirée par la perspective de travailler en extérieur, elle décidait alors de s’orienter vers un baccalauréat ès sciences en géologie à l’université Saint Mary’s, suivi d’une maîtrise avec une spécialisation en géologie structurale à l’université Memorial de Terre-Neuve. « Lorsque j’ai commencé mes études à l’université Saint Mary’s, j’étais la seule femme dans le département ; il m’a fallu trois mois pour m’en rendre compte car j’étais vraiment timide et me concentrais uniquement sur mes études. » Mme Dunsworth travaillait depuis environ vingt ans comme géologue dans les secteurs privé et public du Canada ainsi que 68 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
PrÉcurseur
LAWRENCE CLARK DIRECTEUR DE L'EXPLOITATION, NEWTRAX TECHNOLOGIES
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arry Clark est un phénomène dans l’industrie minière : un haut dirigeant qui a commencé en tant que mineur de fond. Il a été séduit par le secteur minier dès son premier emploi dans une mine de molybdène près de Denver en 1978. « Le dynamitage, ça me plaît beaucoup. Quel jeune de 20 ans ne serait pas attiré? » Il est retourné sur les bancs d’école pour étudier le génie, convaincu qu’il fallait combiner l’extraction minière et la technologie. Alors qu’il approche maintenant de la soixantaine, M. Clark a connu au cours de sa carrière la transition des ordinateurs centraux gigantesques au poste de travail sur PC, et celle des premiers ordinateurs portatifs peu conviviaux aux tablettes et téléphones intelligents. Au cours de ses 30 années de carrière, il a toujours misé sur la technologie, notamment en tant que directeur principal, pendant deux décennies, à Newmont
Avec l’aimable autorisation de Sherry Dunsworth
d’information, avant de créer sa propre entreprise en démarrage spécialisée dans les technologies. Après avoir développé la plateforme TELUS qui s’appuie sur la technologie pour mettre en relation les médecins et leurs patients, il a rejoint en 2004 l’industrie minière en tant que directeur des systèmes d’information chez Placer Dome. Jusqu’ici, les travaux de l’équipe de Digital Systems chez Teck génèrent des résultats pratiques. Durant le premier semestre 2018, la grande société minière a annoncé la mise en œuvre d’un certain nombre de technologies dans ses exploitations, notamment un système d’apprentissage automatique qui prévoit le moment où les camions doivent faire l’objet d’un entretien, et un affichage tête haute pour les opérateurs de pelle. Son équipe a également collaboré avec
Mining et, depuis le mois de mars, en une carrière en technologie [géniale] tant que nouveau directeur de l’exploiqui est valorisante, mais de plus, ils tation chez Newtrax Technologies. auront tous les outils en main pour Dans le cadre de ses nouvelles foncs’assurer que nous tirons le maximum tions, M. Clark s’est imposé comme un de chaque once de diésel que nous utidéfenseur de l’adoption de technololisons, de chaque heure travaillée sous gies visant à améliorer la sécurité de terre et même que nous faisons le l’exploitation minière et à en faire une maximum pour sauver des vies. Ce industrie plus propre et plus rentable sont là des arguments fascinants pour dans la foulée du nouveau courant en la jeune génération, et nous avons un vogue dans le secteur axé sur l’innovabesoin urgent de sa participation. » tion. « L’aversion à la technologie, qui Mais qu’arrivera-t-il aux emplois? était la norme dans le secteur minier, Est-il possible que l’adoption massive évolue enfin avec la réalisation que la de ces technologies réduise le nombre Avec l’aimable autorisation de Newtrax technologie est la clé pour régler les de travailleurs nécessaires, particulièLawrence Clark (en haut) aux journées dédiées au problèmes auxquels nous sommes génie de la Colorado School of Mines (l’école des rement dans les emplois de débutant mines du Colorado) confrontés », explique M. Clark. comme celui qui a lancé M. Clark? Pratiquement tous ces problèmes, « Il y aura toujours des postes de poursuit-il, comme l’obligation de creuser plus profondément, débutant, mais il y en aura de moins en moins au fur et à la complexification de la métallurgie, l’insaisissable accepta- mesure que l’automatisation occupera une plus grande place, bilité sociale et d’autres facteurs, relèvent de la productivité explique-t-il. L’extraction minière au moyen d’outils portatifs ou de la sécurité. Or, il s’avère que ces deux problèmes sont et manuels semblant bel et bien révolue, il est fort probable ceux auxquels Newtrax a décidé de s’attaquer en offrant de que, désormais, les débutants feront différemment leurs prel’équipement, des logiciels et le savoir-faire conçus pour rele- miers pas dans l’industrie. Malgré la disparition d’emplois ver les défis de l’exploitation minière souterraine. nécessitant peu de compétences, les humains seront toujours L’adoption de nouvelles technologies aidera également à ceux qui conçoivent et construisent ces systèmes et qui en attirer les effectifs plus jeunes et diversifiés dont a besoin l’in- assurent l’entretien, la mise en service et la mise hors service. dustrie minière pour assurer sa prospérité. M. Clark a donné Il est également important de souligner que nous attendons beaucoup de son temps pour parler aux jeunes au sujet de la de ces nouveaux participants de l’industrie qu’ils soient technologie, car il sait que des aspects comme l’intelligence empreints de curiosité, d’intelligence et d’un solide esprit artificielle et l’apprentissage machine constituent des attraits d’équipe et de collaboration. La fausse hypothèse en place est puissants auprès des futurs travailleurs. « Désormais, nous de croire que nous aurons besoin de moins de personnel. » Christopher Pollon pouvons dire aux jeunes que non seulement ils vont amorcer Avec l’aimable autorisation de Rio Tinto
l’innovateur
STEVE MCINTOSH RESPONSABLE DU GROUPE CROISSANCE ET INNOVATION DE RIO TINTO
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n mai, Rio Tinto a surmonté un important obstacle lorsque l’organisme de réglementation des chemins de fer lui a donné le feu vert pour son projet d’automatisation de la voie ferrée destiné au transport de minerai de fer de plusieurs exploitations minières vers les ports de la région de Pilbara, en Australie-Occidentale, sans personnel à bord du train. Il s’agit du dernier événement marquant du projet AutoHaul, un volet du programme Mine of the Future de Rio Tinto, qui a commencé il y a 10 ans. Ce programme est également à l’origine de l’introduction de camions de transport et de flottes d’engins de forage autonomes ainsi que de la création du centre d’exploitation à Perth visant à contrôler cette main-d’œuvre automatisée en plein essor. Les enseignements tirés de ces programmes et l’infrastructure technologique déployée pour les gérer deviendront l’arête principale du développement de ces technologies dans tout le réseau d’activités, de développe-
Stephen McIntosh (à droite) lors d’une visite du chantier
ments et de projets encore non exploités de la société aux quatre coins du monde. En tant que responsable du groupe Croissance et innovation de Rio Tinto, Stephen McIntosh est en charge de la gestion de cette expansion et doit se servir des technologies en pleine évolution pour ouvrir des horizons nouveaux. La prochaine étape portera vraisemblablement sur le développement de Koodaideri, un projet d’exploitation du June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 69
70 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
Avec l’aimable autorisation de Maura Kolb
minerai de fer dans la région de Pilbara ; la société, qui l’a baptisé Intelligent Mine, décidera cette année si oui ou non elle lancera le processus. « Ce projet est numérique du début jusqu’à la fin », déclarait M. McIntosh. Au-delà de la mise en œuvre du forage ainsi que du transport par camion et par train entièrement autonomes, « tous les modèles sont numériques, et chaque élément est construit dans un modèle 3D. Une fois construits, ces mêmes modèles deviendront des jumeaux numériques indispensables à l’entretien, de manière à contribuer à une exploitation efficace et en toute sécurité de ces actifs. » La technologie autonome et l’intelligence artificielle seront également déployées pour d’autres volets des activités. « Les pratiques exemplaires en matière de sciences des données seront à la base de ce type de mines - analytique avancée des données, apprentissage automatique et optimisation des bandes pilotes seront intégrées dès le départ », indiquait-il. « À terme, nous serons en mesure d’utiliser des numérisations externes de camions de transport et d’autres équipements pour compléter les données d’exploitation qui sont générées par l’éventail de capteurs installés à bord de ces véhicules. Si une pièce doit être remplacée, le nouvel élément peut être envoyé à la baie de maintenance et être à la disposition des mécaniciens lorsque la machine arrive pour sa révision - ce procédé totalement informatisé permettra d’obtenir des données en temps réel. » M. McIntosh poursuivait en expliquant « qu’une fois les réparations terminées, le système d’automatisation de la mine renvoie le véhicule dans le circuit chargement/transport. C’est la première fois que l’on peut appréhender ce à quoi ressemblera véritablement l’avenir, lorsque l’on associe toutes ces technologies. » Les nouvelles découvertes indispensables au réapprovisionnement des réserves de la société dépendent également de lui. Dans ce projet, on commence à peine à comprendre le rôle de la technologie de pointe, mais le potentiel est immense. Comme l’expliquait M. McIntosh, la société minière, qui fêtera bientôt ses 150 ans, est parvenue à numériser la majeure partie de ses données historiques après plus d’une décennie de travaux. C’est un heureux hasard, ajoutait-il, que son équipe ait terminé le long travail de préparation des données à une époque où l’intelligence artificielle commence à être si prometteuse pour les sociétés d’exploration. « Collectivement, nous disposons de plus d’un siècle de données dans nos archives, qui couvrent plus d’une centaine de pays, mais nous sommes les seuls à avoir accès à une grande partie de ces données. » Selon lui, la capacité à améliorer les cibles d’exploration ainsi que l’aptitude à prendre des décisions rapides et informées sur le terrain sont les armes les plus puissantes dont disposent les géologues. M. McIntosh, qui a commencé sa carrière en tant que géologue dans les années 1980, peut aujourd’hui apprécier la situation dans laquelle se trouve l’industrie minière actuellement et se réjouir face à la position enviable qu’elle occupe pour se tailler une place de maître dans ce nouveau Ryan Bergen domaine.
Maura Kolb (à droite) avec sa mère lors de la journée dédiée à la famille à la mine Red Lake
l’exploration de données
MAURA KOLB GESTIONNAIRE EXPLORATION, RED LAKE, GOLDCORP
M
aura Kolb est plus familière avec l’analyse d’échantillons de roches qu’avec celle de codes machine, mais en tant que directrice de l’exploration à la mine d’or Red Lake de Goldcorp, elle est maintenant responsable d’un projet qui mise sur une approche novatrice à l’exploration englobant les deux. Le projet, mené en partenariat avec IBM, met à contribution sa plateforme d’intelligence artificielle Watson pour repérer les cibles d’exploration à la mine située en Ontario. Selon Goldcorp, depuis le lancement du projet en mars 2017 dans le cadre de l’événement Disrupt Mining au congrès de le PDAC, le temps de traitement des données de forage a chuté de 97 %. « Pour l’instant, personne d’autre n’est en mesure d’analyser [nos données] rapidement, a affirmé Mme Kolb. Nous pouvons interroger nos données comme jamais nous n’avons pu le faire dans le passé. » L’objectif principal du projet est d’utiliser la plateforme Watson pour faciliter le repérage à Red Lake de zones à teneur élevée jusqu’ici passées inaperçues. Si le projet est concluant, Goldcorp prévoit étendre la technologie à d’autres mines. D’après Mme Kolb, Goldcorp espère que ce projet permettra aux géologues de rechercher rapidement des renseignements et d’en faire le tri selon divers critères. Elle estime que les personnes travaillant dans son service consacrent 80 % de leur temps à l’analyse de données selon la méthode traditionnelle. Elles seraient beaucoup plus productives si elles avaient accès à une méthode plus simple pour repérer, filtrer et comparer les données. La société espère également utiliser la plateforme Watson pour prédire l’emplacement probable de gisements en fonction d’un ensemble de données précis; elle souhaite également configurer celle-ci de façon à pouvoir extraire des données à
partir de cartes en ayant recours à la reconnaissance de l’imagerie pour mieux exploiter les données archivées sur support papier. « À mon avis, ce qui rend ce projet si intéressant, c’est entre autres parce que toutes les équipes d’exploitation du monde entier ont de la difficulté à exploiter l’intégralité de leurs données », a expliqué Mme Kolb. À ce jour, l’équipe de Mme Kolb a programmé la plateforme Watson de façon à pouvoir lire des mesures structurelles à partir de cartes, mais elle ne s’est pas encore attaquée à d’autres ensembles de données. Maura Kolb est initialement venue en Ontario pour faire sa maîtrise en géologie à l’Université Lakehead. Elle a travaillé comme consultante à Thunder Bay pendant plusieurs années jusqu’en 2013, alors qu’elle et son mari, également géologue, ont assumé des postes à Goldcorp, tout juste quelques jours
après la naissance de leur premier fils. Elle a été désignée pour piloter le projet quand il a commencé l’année dernière. IBM a précisé que le projet ne visait pas à remplacer les géologues, mais à les aider à mieux faire leur travail et à leur faire gagner du temps. « Contrairement à un ordinateur, nous ne sommes pas capables de nous souvenir de tout ce que nous lisons dans notre base de données, a fait valoir Mme Kolb. Grâce à la capacité de ce superordinateur, les géologues vont pouvoir accomplir tellement plus qu’il ne leur serait possible en tentant de tout absorber après seulement quelques années de travail. » L’apprentissage automatique compte d’autres utilisations potentielles, de la remise en état aux réparations. « Il trouve une foule d’applications différentes dans le secteur minier, a indiqué Mme Kolb. Nous avons seulement commencé à l’examiner sous l’angle de la géologie d’exploration. » Kevin Martine
l’observateur averti
tion d’acquérir Arizona Mining pour la somme de 1,3 milliard de dollars américains. Graham Kerr, chef de la direction de South32, attestait dans un communiqué de presse de la qualité du gisement, qu’il qualifiait de « l’un des projets sur les métaux communs les plus passionnants de l’industrie ». South32 détenait jusqu’ici 17 % d’Arizona Mining. Lorsque M. Taylor a été nommé président en 2010 après avoir quitté son poste de vice-président de l’exploration chez Doe Run, les travaux de la petite société minière étaient alors axés sur l’expansion et le développement d’un gisement d’oxyde de manto d’argent et de manganèse plus proche de la surface. Après avoir compilé des données géophysiques aéroportées et certains résultats de forage à l’échelle régionale dans les années 1970, M. Taylor a conçu un programme de forage dans le but d’examiner la possibilité d’une minéralisation sulfurée à quelques centaines de mètres en aval-pendage de la zone d’oxydation. « Je n’étais animé par aucune raison particulière, mais plusieurs petits indices m’ont incité à forer. Nous avions prévu de forer cinq trous, mais à l’époque, il était difficile de recueillir des fonds et nous avions peu d’argent à la banque », indiquait M. Taylor. « Je ne sais pas s’il en a eu assez d’entendre la même histoire, ou s’il a commencé à y croire, mais notre président exécutif Richard Warke s’est laissé tenter et a investi son propre argent afin que nous procédions au forage. » M. Taylor a étudié la géologie dans l’État du Missouri, et a obtenu en 1983 une maîtrise de l’université du Missouri à Rolla. Cet État du Midwest américain est connu pour ses gisements de substitution de plomb-zinc encaissés dans des roches carbonatées (également appelés gisements de type Mississippi Valley) ; ainsi, M. Taylor était bien conscient de l’importance de cette découverte lorsque le premier trou foré a mis à jour de la galène et de la sphalérite à grains grossiers dans du calcaire altéré. Il a quitté son poste de président (et a été remplacé par Jim Gowans, ancien co-président de Barrick Gold) pour se concentrer sur le forage à Taylor et dans une zone connexe, Taylor Deeps. Quatre années plus tard, ces zones continuent de croître et certaines des dernières carottes de sondage contiennent du cuivre à haute teneur.
DON TAYLOR Avec l’aimable autorisation de Arizona Mining
DIRECTEUR DE L'EXPLOITATION, ARIZONA MINING
L
orsque Don Taylor a pris les rênes d’Arizona Mining il y a huit ans, il espérait satisfaire une envie tenace de développer son esprit d’entreprise. Cette initiative s’est soldée par la découverte de l’un des plus grands gisements de plomb-zinc au monde. « Je travaillais pour des sociétés à forte capitalisation et j’étais à la recherche d’une expérience davantage axée sur l’esprit d’entreprise, une possibilité m’offrant certains avantages. Wildcat Silver (l’ancien nom d’Arizona Mining) avait le profil que je recherchais », déclarait M. Taylor, lauréat 2018 du prix Thayer Lindsley de la Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada pour la meilleure découverte à l’échelle mondiale. Baptisé Taylor en son honneur, le gisement de substitution encaissé dans des roches carbonatées, découvert en 2014 au sud de Tucson en Arizona, affiche des ressources mesurées et indiquées de plus de 100 millions de tonnes américaines (soit environ 90 millions de tonnes) à une teneur de 4,1 % de zinc, 4,3 % de plomb et 2,1 onces par tonne d’argent. Arizona Mining creuse actuellement une descenderie d’exploration jumelée vers le gisement Taylor et espère publier son étude de faisabilité au cours du troisième trimestre 2018 ; la production devrait commencer dès 2020. Le gisement a retenu l’attention de la société minière australienne South32 Limited, qui a annoncé mi-juin son inten-
June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 71
ses concessions non brevetées, où 78 autres cibles ont été définies. « J’ai eu la grande chance de contribuer à l’expansion ou à la découverte de trois ou quatre gisements aveugles durant ma carrière », indiquait M. Taylor, « mais rien qui puisse rivaliser Virginia Heffernan avec un gisement de cette ampleur ».
Jon Benjamin Photography
D’après M. Taylor, la stratigraphie hôte s’étend jusqu’au sud et au nord-est, et la probabilité de découvrir un autre gisement est « énorme ». Jusqu’ici, le forage se cantonne à des concessions minières brevetées, mais Arizona Mining est en phase d’obtenir des permis auprès de l’United States Forest Service (le service des forêts des États-Unis) pour forer
le spécialiste de la fermeture des mines
CARL GRANT RESPONSABLE DU GROUPE CHARGÉ DE LA PLANIFICATION DE LA FERMETURE DES MINES, ANGLO AMERICAN
L
e certificat qu’a obtenu Carl Grant pour la fermeture de la première mine de bauxite d’Alcoa à Jarrahdale, dans le sud de l’Australie-Occidentale, marque le couronnement de sa carrière. « La mine a fermé ses portes en 2001, et nous avons obtenu un certificat de fermeture du gouvernement en 2005, dégageant la responsabilité de la société », déclarait M. Grant. « Peu de personnes dans notre industrie peuvent en dire autant ; c’est pourtant un accomplissement important qui montre aux communautés que nous ne faisons pas de promesses dans le vide. » M. Grant est aujourd’hui responsable du groupe chargé de la planification de la fermeture des mines à Anglo American. Il occupe ce poste depuis 2014, et a développé et mis en œuvre, aux côtés de son équipe de spécialistes en matière de fermeture des mines, l’Integrated Closure Planning System (IPCS, le système de planification intégrée de la fermeture d’une mine) d’Anglo American pour le portefeuille mondial des exploitations de la société. L’un des objectifs de l’ICPS est d’intégrer la planification de la fermeture des mines au sein du même progiciel utilisé pour la planification minière afin que ce dernier puisse exécuter un scénario global relatif à la durée de vie de la mine. Le premier projet pilote dédié à l’ICPS a été testé en 2015, à l’exploitation de minerai de fer Kolomela en Afrique du Sud. « Ce projet pilote, qui a duré 15 mois et nous a permis d’économiser environ 30 millions de dollars en coûts d’exploitation, s’appuyait sur le déversement des stériles dans une zone spécifique de la fosse minière ou sur de courtes distances plutôt que sur le déplacement des déchets miniers depuis la fosse jusqu’aux zones surélevées de décharge des stériles », expliquait M. Grant. En raison du manque d’informations sur les coûts liés à la fermeture des mines, indiquait-il, les planificateurs de la durée de vie de la mine prennent souvent des décisions qui ne tiennent pas totalement compte de la responsabilité liée à la fermeture d’une exploitation. « Lorsque les ingénieurs ont en main les données chiffrées relatives à la fermeture, leurs décisions changent », expliquait M. Grant. « Par exemple, une option donnée peut engendrer une augmentation des dépenses d’exploitation de 5 cents par tonne, mais nous permettre parallèlement d’économiser 50 millions de dollars au niveau de la responsabilité liée à la fermeture. » Anglo American a commencé le développement de l’ICPS fin 2014. Ce système associe les divers régimes de planification, les exigences internes et externes ainsi que les considé72 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
rations financières liées à l’exécution des scénarios relatifs à la durée de vie de la mine sur des plateformes logicielles existantes de planification minière. « L’ICPS nous aide à minimiser les coûts liés à la fermeture des mines en effectuant autant de travaux liés à la fermeture que possible pendant la phase d’exploitation », indiquait M. Grant. « Nous pouvons procéder à une remise en état progressive et optimiser l’emplacement de nos stériles pour réduire au minimum les responsabilités et les risques au moment de la fermeture. » M. Grant a mené une carrière dans le domaine des sciences de l’environnement ; il a grandi à Kalgoorlie, une ville minière d’Australie-Occidentale, où il a personnellement assisté aux perturbations et à la pollution des terres par l’exploitation minière. Il détient un doctorat en écologie relative aux feux de forêt, et a approfondi ses compétences chez Alcoa, une société d’exploitation de la bauxite, avant de déménager dans l’est du pays pour enseigner à l’université de Nouvelle-Angleterre, en Nouvelle-Galles du Sud. C’est là qu’il a créé le premier cours en Australie dédié à la réhabilitation des écosystèmes, avant de revenir à Alcoa pour mener des recherches et réhabiliter des mines fermées dans les forêts de Jarrah, dans le sud de l’Australie-Occidentale. En 2010, il a rejoint Anglo American en tant que responsable de l’environnement pour les mines de charbon d’Australie et du Canada, avant de devenir responsable global de la planification de la fermeture des mines en 2014. C’est dans cette fonction qu’il a commencé à développer l’IPCS. Un second projet pilote sur l’ICPS a été mené à la mine de charbon Drayton dans la vallée Hunter en Australie, et cinq autres sont en cours sur des sites d’Afrique du Sud, du Brésil et du Botswana. M. Grant et son équipe espèrent terminer les projets pilotes d’ici mi-2019, et déployer l’ICPS dans toutes les exploitations d’Anglo American d’ici 2021.
deuxième International Congress on Planning for Closure of Mining Operations (le congrès international sur la planification de la fermeture des exploitations minières), qu’il présidera. Kylie Williams
le SIMPlificateur
VINCE GERRIE PDG, KORE GEOSYSTEMS
V
ince Gerrie n’aime pas la répétition. « Je trouve extrêmement frustrant de faire les mêmes choses constamment, des choses banales et répétitives », expliquaitil. « J’éprouve un besoin impétueux de développer des méthodes permettant d’éviter d’effectuer des tâches répétitives. » KORE Geosystems et DGI Geoscience, les deux sociétés qu’il a fondées durant sa carrière impressionnante de 24 ans dans les services miniers, ont pour objet d’éliminer les tâches Vince Gerrie (à gauche) avec le conseiller supérieur de Kore Geosystems Chris Drielsma fastidieuses sur les sites miniers et d’améliorer la rentabilité des exploitations. Leur objectif est de simplifier données dont nous disposions à DGI, nous avons commencé les activités en recueillant et en analysant les données afin d’at- à nous tourner vers d’autres sources de données qui pouvaient ténuer les tâches habituellement très longues. s’avérer intéressantes pour nos clients », précisait M. Gerrie. M. Gerrie a lancé KORE, son projet le plus récent, en 2015. La nouvelle société a été constituée lorsque M. Gerrie et son Cette société se spécialise dans la conception d’équipements, équipe ont compris qu’il existait « un marché pour la résolutels que des capteurs et des systèmes d’acquisition des don- tion de problèmes à l’aide de sources de données allant aunées, qui associent la science des données et l’intelligence arti- delà de celles offertes par DGI ». ficielle (IA) en vue d’améliorer la collecte de données et leur M. Gerrie a créé DGI vers ses 25 ans, juste après avoir utilisation dans l’exploration minérale. L’année dernière, sa obtenu son diplôme de sciences de la Terre à l’université de technologie de forage intelligent a attiré l’attention des juges Waterloo, inspiré par un stage formateur en alternance dans à Disrupt Mining, un concours s’inscrivant dans le style de le département de géophysique de surface de la commission l’émission de télévision Dragon’s Den, qui se tenait durant la géologique du Canada (CGC). Il avait traversé le pays pour conférence de la Prospectors and Developers Association of recueillir des informations précieuses sur les propriétés des Canada (PDAC, l’association canadienne des prospecteurs et roches situées au fond des trous de forage, notamment la denentrepreneurs). Cette conférence, qui met à l’honneur l’inno- sité, la vitesse des ondes acoustiques, la résistivité, la conducvation dans l’industrie minière, l’a désigné co-vainqueur de tivité, les rayons gamma naturels et la susceptibilité l’événement ; en septembre, la société négociait un investis- magnétique. sement d’un million de dollars avec Goldcorp, le principal Si ce genre d’analyses est courant pour les puits de forage commanditaire du concours. La technologie présentée par de pétrole et de gaz, elles étaient relativement rares dans le M. Gerrie permet de recueillir et d’analyser des données de secteur minier. « L’industrie dépensait beaucoup d’argent pour trous de forage à l’endroit même où le forage a lieu ou immé- le forage, mais laissait de côté la collecte d’informations prédiatement après le forage, éliminant ainsi le besoin, long et cieuses ! », déclarait M. Gerrie. Il a donc saisi cette occasion coûteux, d’envoyer des échantillons de roches à un laboratoire et est parti pour les Territoires du Nord-Ouest (T.N.-O.) afin lointain. de proposer ce service à l’industrie du diamant. C’est de là que D’après M. Gerrie, l’investissement de Goldcorp aidera à s’est développée DGI. transformer les idées en réalité. « En ce moment, l’accélération Si son titre est resté le même durant ses 17 ans au sein de du développement technologique est très en vogue […]. C’est DGI, M. Gerrie s’est assuré que ses responsabilités évoluent vraiment frustrant d’avoir autant d’excellentes idées et de ne parallèlement à la croissance de la société ; il a l’intention d’en pas disposer des ressources nécessaires pour les mettre en pra- faire autant au sein de KORE. « Pour moi, le profit financier tique. L’heure est venue de mettre nos idées à exécution ! » ne constitue pas nécessairement un élément de motivation KORE a vu le jour après des discussions à DGI, la société pour la croissance de la [société] », déclarait-il. « Par contre, d’acquisition, d’analyse et d’intégration des données sur les la résolution de nouveaux problèmes et les nouveaux rôles et trous de forage que M. Gerrie avait fondée en 1997. « Lorsque responsabilités sont incontestablement des facteurs imporCecilia Keating nous avons compris la valeur que nous pouvions tirer des tants. » June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 73
Avec l’aimable autorisation de Vince Gerrie
« Notre plus grande difficulté a sans doute été de faire prendre conscience à tous du rôle qu’ils doivent jouer dans la fermeture des mines », déclarait M. Grant. En novembre cette année, il transmettra son message à Santiago, à l’occasion du
BIEN
CRAMPONNÉ ET SUR LA BONNE VOIE
Pour accéder à l’or se trouvant sous terre à sa mine Goldex sans dépenser une fortune, Agnico Eagle a donné sa chance à un système de transport innovant
Kelsey Rolfe
Par Kelsey Rolfe
Les wagonnets du système de transport n’étant composés que de parois latérales, chaque train forme une longue rame qui peut épouser les courbes des galeries souterraines.
“L
e point fort de ce système est indéniablement la piste de déchargement du minerai à 360 degrés », déclarait David Paquette, directeur général chargé de l’entretien à la mine Goldex, à proximité de Val-d’Or, au Québec. Au terminus de Rail-Veyor, le système électrique léger sur rail de transport du minerai, M. Paquette nous décrit la boucle à 360° des rails. Après avoir parcouru une piste de trois kilomètres (km) à partir du niveau le plus bas de la mine Goldex, le système Rail-Veyor déverse le minerai qu’il transporte sur cette piste. « On se croirait à La Ronde. » La description est assez pertinente ; en effet, cette piste de déchargement ressemble à une version industrielle des montagnes russes du parc d’attraction de Montréal. La seule différence est qu’à La Ronde, les passagers ne sont pas 74 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 13, No. 4
brusquement propulsés hors du wagon alors qu’ils sont la tête à l’envers à 750 mètres sous terre. Le système Rail-Veyor transporte du minerai à Goldex depuis septembre l’année dernière. Il s’agit du premier déploiement à grande échelle sous terre de ce système en Amérique du Nord. Cette technologie permet de transporter le minerai du gisement Deep 1 de la mine jusqu’à la surface ; sans lui, le gisement, en raison de sa teneur (1,59 gramme par tonne) et de son emplacement, n’aurait pas été économiquement viable pour la mine. Le gisement Deep 1 a permis d’ajouter sept ans au cycle de vie de la mine Goldex, qui ira désormais jusqu’en 2025. « Notre gisement affiche de faibles teneurs, aussi notre production doit maintenir un haut débit », indiquait Christian
Lessard, responsable de l’entretien à Goldex. « Le treuil d’extraction minière et le système Rail-Veyor permettent d’assurer une production élevée. » L’objectif à la mine Goldex est de maintenir les coûts liés à l’exploitation du site endeçà des 40 dollars par tonne de minerai extrait. Depuis sa mise en service, le système RailVeyor a transporté au total 439 755 tonnes de minerai depuis le gisement Deep 1, à une capacité de 2 400 tonnes par jour depuis juin. Comme l’expliquait M. Paquette, la mine œuvre actuellement à augmenter la capacité totale de Rail-Veyor à 6 000 tonnes par jour, et espère y parvenir d’ici 2019. Au niveau 115 du gisement Deep 1, à plus d’un kilomètre sous terre, le minerai est déchargé dans un grizzly (un crible scalpeur), et les refus de crible sont envoyés dans une L’or est extrait à l’aide du circuit par gravité à l’usine Goldex, ou il est transporté par camion jusqu’à l’exploitation LaRonde dans un concentré épaissi qui subit une pièce d’abattage. Un alimentateur vibrant lixiviation par cyanuration. dépose le matériau dans l’un des 68 wagonnets des six trains. De là, le train contrôlé à distance évolue sur un circuit remontant un plan incliné à 17 %, de feu vert d’Agnico en juillet 2015 ; la production commerciale a son point de départ au niveau 1 250 mètres de la mine Gol- débuté à la fin du mois d’août de cette même année. Devant dex jusqu’au niveau 730 mètres. Tout au long de son dépla- agrandir le système de levage existant à partir de la GEZ pour cement, il avance à l’aide de roues gonflées à la mousse vers transporter le minerai du gisement le plus bas, l’équipe a envi91 stations d’entraînement qui sont régulièrement espacées sagé plusieurs options, dont le système Rail-Veyor. « Le plus important pour [l’équipe de Goldex] était de le long du circuit. Les roues horizontales de Rail-Veyor entrent en contact avec les plaques latérales des wagonnets déterminer si elle pouvait réduire les coûts tout en prolongeant la durée de vie de la mine et ce, en creusant plus propour les faire avancer et reculer. Pour éviter aux roches de glisser du wagonnet en tête du fond sans ajouter d’aérage supplémentaire », déclarait Frank train et de tomber sur la voie, le chargement commence à Ward, vice-président des ventes et du marketing à Rail-Veyor Technologies Global, la société de Sudbury, en Ontario, à partir du second wagonnet. Lorsqu’il arrive sur la piste de déchargement, le train l’origine du système Rail-Veyor. L’équipe a constaté que cette technologie serait moins coûavance sur la partie supérieure ; une fois à l’envers, le minerai transporté dans le wagonnet est déversé dans un silo. De là, teuse que des camions de transport, et ne nécessiterait aucun le Rail-Veyor, vide, retourne à son point de départ, et le aérage supplémentaire. En outre, contrairement à un convoyeur, ce système pourrait également être construit le minerai est remonté à la surface. long de courbes afin d’éviter des zones de terrain instables. « Nous avons rencontré des problèmes d’ordre géotechnique La minéralisation qui est devenue la zone Deep 1 a été dans le passé lorsque nous avons commencé l’exploitation découverte en 2007. Elle est située sous la Goldex Extension dans la GEZ », expliquait M. Lessard. « Aussi, nous nous faiZone (GEZ, la zone d’extension de la mine Goldex) qu’exploi- sons une priorité à la mine Goldex de procéder à l’excavation tait Agnico Eagle, et la société a commencé les travaux de dans une roche de la meilleure qualité possible. » M. Lessard précisait que cette technologie présente un forage afin de déterminer l’ampleur de la minéralisation. avantage supplémentaire, celui de permettre à l’équipe de Cependant, avant de publier une estimation des resréutiliser les galeries d’accès existantes. « Nous avons pu utisources pour la zone Deep, Agnico a fermé Goldex trois ans liser ces excavations avec le Rail-Veyor, aussi nous avons pu après son ouverture en raison du manque de stabilité des réduire les coûts de développement », indiquait M. Lessard. roches au-dessus de la GEZ et de l’endroit même où avaient Environ un quart du système a été installé le long de galeries lieu les travaux pour la zone Deep. Un peu moins d’une année plus tard, en juillet 2012, la société approuvait le déve- de 4,5 mètres de large, que la société a élargies à 5,8 mètres loppement des zones satellites M et E sur le site de Goldex, pour permettre à un tracteur de circuler à côté des rails. « Le où les roches étaient plus stables ; la mine a rouvert ses système Rail-Veyor peut être utilisé sur un plan incliné plus portes en 2013. La GEZ a été totalement éliminée car son étroit, mais en termes d’entretien et de disponibilité, nous exploitation présentait trop de dangers. avons opté pour un plan incliné plus large », ajoutait-il. Les travaux ont repris à Goldex, et l’équipe a commencé à se Équipé de barrières autour des galeries et d’un contrôle pencher sur le développement de Deep 1 après avoir obtenu le d’accès pour éviter que les travailleurs ne se blessent, M. Les-
SuR LE chEmin dE dEEP 1
June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 75
Avec l’aimable autorisation d’Agnico Eagle
profil de projet
GEStion dES RiSquES
Kelsey Rolfe
sard expliquait que le système RailVeyor présente de grands avantages en termes de sécurité. Le système s’arrête automatiquement si des travailleurs passent les barrières. Il ne produit en outre aucune émission. « Le diesel n’engendre ni chaleur ni poussière », indiquait M. Lessard. « On ne peut nier cet avantage en termes de santé et de sécurité. » Le plus gros atout de Rail-Veyor reste sans doute sa capacité à transporter des roches plus grosses qu’un convoyeur, aussi il n’a pas été nécessaire d’installer un concasseur ; la période de construction à la zone Deep 1 a ainsi été réduite de six mois. Le système est contrôlé à distance, et l’accès aux rails est limité afin de protéger le personnel.
Toute nouvelle technologie s’accompagne de risques. D’après M. Lessard, la plus grande préoccupation entourant l’installation de Rail-Veyor concernait l’éventualité d’un déraillement du train, notamment dans une pente aussi abrupte. « Nous ne connaissions pas le taux de déraillement, et si cela venait à se produire, nous ne savions pas vraiment comment le réparer », indiquait-il. Pour atténuer les difficultés, l’équipe a ajouté un système de sécurité ainsi que des barrières, et a instauré des procédures concernant la mise en place du train sur la voie, indiquait M. Paquette. La taille du train est également source de complexité en termes d’entretien. Le Rail-Veyor est composé de 182 roues à ses 91 stations d’entraînement, et compte plus de 400 wagonnets, précisait M. Paquette. La société a installé des capteurs pour la maintenance préventive, et dispose d’un inventaire complet de pièces de rechange pour éviter les pannes inattendues. D’après M. Paquette, les préposés à l’entretien vérifient régulièrement les trains et les stations d’entraînement afin de s’assurer qu’il n’y ait pas de problème. « Étant la première société à [utiliser Rail-Veyor], nous sommes plus prudents », expliquait M. Paquette. « Après cinq, voire dix ans d’utilisation de Rail-Veyor, nous espacerons les inspections. Mais pour le moment, nous investissons plus d’énergie que d’habitude dans ce genre de détails. » M. Lessard indiquait que l’équipe essaie également de résoudre un problème au niveau des roues aux stations d’entraînement ; elles produisent une matière visqueuse noire qui affecte la friction entre les pneus et les plaques latérales des wagonnets. Agnico collabore actuellement avec Rail-Veyor et nombreuses autres sociétés sur un banc d’essai à Sudbury en vue de trouver une roue plus adaptée.
AccéLéRAtion
La voie vers le premier déploiement sous terre du système Rail-Veyor en Amérique du Nord a été parsemée d’em-
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bûches. La première itération du système a été installée il y a environ 10 ans en Afrique du Sud, à la mine Phakisa de la société Harmony Gold. Après le décès en 2009 de Risto Laamanen, le créateur de Rail-Veyor, sa famille avait beaucoup de mal à gérer la société, indiquait M. Ward. Entre 2010 et 2011, de nouveaux investisseurs ont aidé à la relancer et à la refinancer. « Jusqu’en 2015, nous avons passé de nombreuses heures à tenter d’améliorer Rail-Veyor afin d’en faire un système plus fiable et moins onéreux, et de nous rapprocher des normes automobiles plutôt que de le fabriquer de manière plus artisanale », ajoutait M. Ward. « Nous avons procédé ainsi afin de rendre le système commercialisable pour le marché minier actuel, en pleine expansion », déclarait M. Ward. Rail-Veyor installe aujourd’hui un système de surface dans une installation de coke de pétrole au Venezuela ainsi qu’un autre système souterrain dans une mine de plomb au sud-est du Missouri. M. Ward expliquait qu’il avait fallu beaucoup de temps avant que des clients potentiels « nous demandent des renseignements » ; aujourd’hui cependant, la nouvelle s’est répandue et les demandes deviennent plus fréquentes. « L’intérêt se fait maintenant sentir au niveau international, de même qu’en Amérique du Nord. » Quant à Goldex, M. Lessard indiquait que l’un des meilleurs arguments de vente de Rail-Veyor est que le système est expansible. Agnico envisage actuellement de développer d’autres zones à Goldex (le premier chantier pilote dans la zone South devrait être opérationnel d’ici le mois de juin), et la société investit des millions de dollars cette année dans le forage des zones Deep 2 et 3. « La zone South est à proximité de Deep 1, et elle pourrait utiliser l’installation existante », indiquait M. Lessard. « Si nous obtenons le feu vert pour développer Deep 2, nous pourrions ajouter quelques stations d’entraînement et également utiliser le système Rail-Veyor dans ces zones. » ICM
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Markets, Economics, and the Role of Extractive Metallurgists Boyd Davis and Luisa Moreno
This article is reprinted with permission from JOM (2018), Volume 70, Issue 6, pp. 779-781, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11837-018-2899-8. Copyright 2018 by The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society.
It is quite easy for members of our profession to be immersed in the technical content at conferences—after all, there are always some not-to-be missed presentations at these events. However, it
Registration Open for Extraction 2018 August 26–29, 2018 Westin Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Don’t miss Extraction 2018—a new opportunity to gather with your colleagues in the global extractive metallurgy community. Register before June 26 to take advantage of discount rates. Please note that the housing registration deadline is July 24. Visit www.extractionmeeting.org for additional information and to register.
is important to keep the bigger picture in mind—that technology must be integrated into economics and that an understanding of the markets is critical to bringing new commodity sources into operation. As extractive metallurgists, it is incumbent on us to help educate those in the nancial sector, as well as geologists and miners, about the key role that early analysis of a project’s processing component can play in the success of that project. It is also useful for us to better understand the nancial drivers that often run in parallel, but not always in step, with downstream technology. What we see as exciting innovations in process development are often seen by the nancial community as highly risky technological leaps with the potential of massive capital and operating cost overruns. (Sadly, there are a number of examples of this.) Mining project development is a timely topic. The project development slump of the last ve years is coming to an end and there is renewed interest in mining projects, as a resurgence in global growth continues to drive increased requirements for new sources of supply. The demand for battery materials to supply the massive growth
Boyd Davis
Luisa Moreno June/July • Juin/Juillet 2018 | 77
expected in electric vehicles has also renewed interest and is opening up massive demand growth for certain minor metals and materials, often referred to as strategic materials. The development of lithium, graphite, and cobalt deposits, to name some of the strategic materials, is not the same as for copper-gold deposits. A broader understanding of processing is needed with these resources to be sure that they can be economically brought to market—it involves more than just the deposit grade or size. For all metals, companies are turning to more complex ores—the “easy” projects
always get developed rst, which means the remaining projects are inherently more politically and technically challenging. This means that the role of the extractive metallurgist is even more crucial to the overall arch of a project, and the nancial and technical worlds must start to interact in a more meaningful way. As part of Extraction 2018, slated for August 26–29 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, a number of speakers have been invited to give attendees a primer on the world of resource nance in the symposium, Markets and Economics. The symposium will be held from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
A Brief History of Extraction 2018 Boyd Davis Extraction 2018 came about after a number of members of NAEMC (North American Extractive Metallurgy Committee, which oversees interaction among the Metallurgy and Materials Society (MetSoc) of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM), the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME), and The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS)) realized that there was going to be at least four extractive metallurgy conferences planned for 2018. Bringing them all under one roof for maximum convenience and impact on behalf seemed like the right thing to do. A key catalyst for the development of Extraction 2018 was the inclusion of Hydrometallurgy 2018, a revolving hydrometallurgy conference that runs every four years among MetSoc, SME, and TMS. In addition, TMS’s highly regarded Sulfide Smelting Symposium that occurs every six years has been brought to Extraction 2018. These two anchoring symposia are supported by SME with its symposium on Sulfide Flotation. The extractive sections of MetSoc (Pyromet and Hydromet) are contributing significantly to the Extraction 2018 program as well, with the MetSoc Pyromet section assisting with the Peter Hayes Symposium and the MetSoc Hydromet section running the Gordon
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Ritcey Symposium as part of Hydrometallurgy 2018. In addition, an all-conference plenary is planned for Sunday, August 26, at 4:00 p.m., immediately following the Markets and Economics symposium previewed in the main article. The plenary will give attendees a look at where the industry has come from and where it is going from two experts, Jeremy Mouat and Peter Warrian, who combine their knowledge of history and technology in the extractive sector to set the stage for a deeper perspective for the technical programming that will run from Monday, August 27, to Wednesday, August 29. The three societies have a number of other events planned as well, including poster sessions, short courses, an industrial exhibition, tours, and networking and social opportunities. Extraction 2018 marks the first time that SME, TMS, and MetSoc have all jointly organized a conference. So far, it has been an excellent experience for members of the three societies who meet on a monthly basis to discuss the progress of the meeting. Each society is contributing to make the conference a success, and based on the number of papers accepted and the response so far, it looks like we will have an excellent turnout of professionals from around the world.
on Sunday, August 26, with the technical portion of the conference starting on Monday. The presentations will roughly follow the path of a mining project. The lead-off speaker, Mark Selby, is president of RNC Minerals, which is currently developing one of the largest nickel reserves in the world with the Dumont Project in Canada. He will begin the symposium with a discussion on the world of junior mining, how junior mining companies operate, and what is important to them. There will be special attention to how companies interact with technology—an important issue, since many junior companies have a higher risk tolerance than producing companies. Bankers and investors are really key to project nancing, and they are brought in at various stages of mine development so that mining projects can have access to suf cient capital to advance through each stage. Information must be clearly presented to them and processed in a way that minimizes risk while maximizing the opportunity. Raising money involves not just determining “how much” capital will be required to reach the next stage, but also “how” the capital will be raised (i.e., equity or debt), “from whom,” and “under what terms.” Nothing can move forward without the cash to pay for it. Research analysts on both the sell side (investment banks) and buy side (investment funds) play an important role. Analysts try to cover both the nancial and technical aspects of a project. They interact with companies to help get the word out about their project (sell side) through research reports. Others work for funds that buy shares in these companies (buy side). The marriage between the nancial sector and technical sector is an important part of an analyst’s job. This is why a key aspect of the Extraction 2018 Markets and Economics symposium is discussion on how companies are promoted, the basis for their share valuation, and what investors look for when choosing companies. It should be an eye-opening experience for those of us who think of technology as the main driver for company valuation. As projects advance, they go from initial bench scale, to pilots, to demonstrations. This chain of technical work needs to
advance the project in the right way. Often the nancial path and the technical path end up out of sync, causing disruptions on both sides. A highlight of the Markets and Economics symposium will be a presentation by Michael Samis from Ernst & Young that will look at piloting from the nancial side—what aspects are key to a project successfully moving forward. Once a project is ready to go with a complete bankable feasibility study, the full project mining nance package needs to be put together—capital costs can run from a few million to billions of dollars and can involve multiple investments groups, such as private equity funds and end-users, each with different risk tolerances and capital return requirements. At the end, once the resource is extracted, it has to be sold. This is relatively straightforward for clean, London Metal Exchange (LME) traded materials, but much more complicated for concentrates, secondary materials, and non-LME resources. Jay Hemenway, of Ocean Partners will give a revealing talk at the symposium on the world of commodity trading. Hemenway is an extractive metallurgist turned trader and will speci cally discuss how extractive metallurgists who operate on projects and technologies that have timelines of perhaps a decade can be better informed by traders who operate on timelines of days. Lastly, as a part of a global industry, it is important to understand how China ts into the equation. Extraction 2018 is fortunate to have Suping Yao, a Chinese Master of Design for non-ferrous metals with China Nerin Engineering Company, close the Markets and Economics symposium with a talk on how Chinese smelters operate and the factors affecting their pro tability. The Markets and Economics symposium is shaping up to be an interesting and educational start to Extraction 2018. Hopefully, it will make a lasting impression on attendees, while they discuss otation, leaching, and smelting over the course of the conference.
“It is important to keep the bigger picture in mind—that technology must be integrated into economics and that an understanding of the markets is critical to bringing new commodity sources into operation.”
Boyd Davis is principal, Kingston Process Metallurgy, Inc., and a conference co-chair of Extraction 2018. Luisa Moreno is a managing partner and analyst with Tahuti Global and a coorganizer and featured speaker at the Markets and Economics symposium at Extraction 2018.
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obituary
A guiding light in mineral processing passes away Klaus Konigsmann created a legacy built on his operational expertise and support of young engineers By Jan Nesset
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him for his many contributions with the Airey and Life Member awards and a CIM Fellowship. “Klaus was Canada’s most respected and knowledgeable expert in the field of mineral processing,” said Alex Balogh, the retired CEO and chairman of Falconbridge and deputy chair of Noranda. “He practiced his profession tirelessly and walked through most of the world’s processing plants offering advice generously. He was honoured to receive lifetime achievement awards from his peers in the mining industry. But when I asked Klaus what achievement he was most proud of during his career, without hesitation he said, ‘My contribution to the Canadian Mineral Industry Education Foundation.’ Klaus, together with Graham Farquharson and the foundation directors, made possible the education of hundreds of young Canadians who aspired to an engineering career in the mining industry.” Ernie Marcotte, inaugural chairman of CMP in 1968–69, recalled that Klaus “was a very positive contributor to the many operations-oriented discussions that took place, as well as an obvious strong promoter of CMP. Klaus provided many positive suggestions and recommendations pertaining to the many mineral processing developments that were presented at the annual meetings. His appropriate leadership, knowledgeable comments and prudent suggestions were very much appreciated by the members, who had a very favourable regard and respect for Klaus and his contributions.” Klaus’ son Eric Konigsmann, a manager of project engineering at Teck Resources, said, “We will forever remember Klaus as a great father, a man who leaves a great legacy, a man who lived his life to the fullest, who never accepted compromise at the expense of anyone, a leader and a person upon whom we can only aspire to live up to.” Klaus is survived by his children Eric (Claudia), Ann (David) and Peter (Susan), and his grandchildren Peter, Mark, Jennifer, Tyler, Kyle and Sean. Klaus was preceded in death by his wife, Yolande, in 2007. CIM Courtesy of Klaus’ family
he mining community has lost an iconic figure. On April 26 Klaus Konigsmann passed away at age 88 after a brief illness. There are few in our industry who did not know, or know of, Klaus. He had an illustrious career in mineral processing and mining that spanned more than 50 years from his graduation from McGill University’s metallurgical engineering program in 1958 until his retirement as a consultant just a few years ago. Klaus Konigsmann The first several decades of his career were spent at operating sites in northwestern Quebec, including Noranda’s Mattagami Lake mines where he served as mill metallurgist when operations began in 1963, becoming mill superintendent in 1968. While at Mattagami, Klaus was one of the first to introduce onstream analysis and computer flotation control in mills. In 1977 he moved to Oakville, Ontario, to serve as director of milling for Noranda Minerals and eventually became vice-president of engineering until his retirement in 1995. This was followed by a very active period as a consultant to the industry with involvement in process design and evaluations on a global scale, including at the Antamina copper-zinc project in Peru, the Çayeli copper-zinc operation in Turkey and the Kemess copper-gold mine in British Columbia. Perhaps Klaus’ greatest legacy has been the many young engineers he mentored, encouraged and championed throughout his career. As noted by his son Eric during his eulogy to his father, Klaus’ advice to these young people was to “surround yourself with people smarter than you are and shine by reflected glory.” Many of these young people not only became successful colleagues in the industry but lifelong friends who admired his outgoing, gregarious and gracious nature. Klaus gave of his time and energy freely to causes that mattered to him. He was a strong supporter of the Canadian Mineral Processors (CMP) society and was involved at its transition from the Canadian Gold Metallurgists into CMP in 1968–69. CMP honoured him as the inaugural recipient of the Mill Man of the Year award in 1984 and as a Life Member in 1995. CIM and the Metallurgical and Materials Society (MetSoc) has recognized
Jan Nesset is the director of Nessetech Consulting Services Inc.
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MINING LORE A Great Plain lie By Cecilia Keating
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espite no concrete evidence of needed for a 100-ton-per-day Beammineable gold deposits in Kansas, process mill. Beam never arrived in Smoky far-fetched stories of riches have Hill City to supervise construction, and enticed adventurers, prospectors and minthe project collapsed. ing investors to the state since the 16th Undeterred, the shale men offered century. But the frenzy for non-existent $100,000 to anyone who could work the gold culminated at the turn of the 20th Smoky Hill ore. In mid-1900, W. F. Miller century, when a string of fraudsters capisaid he could do it, in exchange for the talized on investors’ gullibility and greed first week’s gold output. A mill was built to with false promises and fake assay results. his specifications in early 1901. But Miller Inspired by an 1851 map that revealed mysteriously left before operations began, a tin mine on the Smoky Hill River in cenclaiming his wife was ill, and sold his tral Kansas, railroad magnate Cyrus Holliinterest for $2,500. The mill could not day sent prospectors to investigate the function without him and was abandoned. area’s geology in 1884. The map was a The shale men then hired Charles hoax, but the prospectors’ efforts piqued Gage, who falsely claimed to be a professor the interest of a high-ranking military offiand to have worked extensively in the Railroad magnate Cyrus Holliday sent cial named Henry Artz. United States and Australia. The Gage mill prospectors to investigate around Smoky Artz formed the Smoky River Mining Hill River in central Kansas after seeing a was opened near the deserted Miller mill Company in 1895, claiming to have found map that revealed a tin mine nearby. on September 1901. After a week, during zinc. Two years later, he reported gold and which Gage said he extracted $12 per ton silver. Despite many prominent assayers’ reports saying the of gold, he suspended operations, saying he was waiting on a shale contained nothing of value, Artz selectively worked with new crusher and extra leach tanks. those who assured him of the opposite. Gage asked his employers for the $10,000 owed to him. Denver assayer Aron Beam wowed Artz with his testing The mill owners, learning from their experience with Miller, results, which showed that the shale promised $15 in gold and refused, promising payment only when he could prove the $3 in silver per ton, on top of 20 per cent zinc. He alleged he mill could function without him. Gage abandoned ship. could easily extract it with the “Beam process.” As a result, Unsurprisingly, when the mill reopened two months later, only prospectors flooded the area and businessmen bought options 22.5 cents of gold were recovered from a test run of three tons on farmland, formed mining companies and sold shares to city of shale. investors. Smoky Hill City was founded. The slow-learning Topeka investors then turned to a But Beam was a prolific fraudster, denounced regularly in Philadelphia scientist named Ernst Fahrig, who boasted a mining journals and motivated by sales of his process. Kansas gold-leaching process that required a secret chemical called state geologist Erasmus Haworth repeatedly reported that state bauxogen. Fahrig refused to disclose its formula or allow sciassayers could not find more than negligible gold or silver in entists to observe the secret process, but a local newspaper samples. In 1898, renowned inventor Thomas Edison investi- reported he charged the company $3,000 for the bauxogen gated the Kansas shale and reported no gold. needed for just one run in the test mill (approximately 450 Faced with a barrage of scepticism, the shale men got kilograms of ore). defensive. Charles Holliday, Cyrus Holliday’s son, carried a The opening of Fahrig’s mill stalled for nine months. The three-quarter-ounce piece of gold allegedly extracted from a professor said there was no fault in the process, but that he ton of Kansas shale in his pocket. His partner Fred Close also simply needed more equipment and more bauxogen for the took up the habit, storing a five-ounce bar of gold and two mill. He left Kansas in April 1903 loaded with rock specimens small bars of silver on him as he walked around Topeka. Close from the test mill – purportedly for testing in his Philadelphia bragged that he would ask the University of Kansas’s trustees laboratory – and never returned. to fire Haworth, who was also a professor, and that he would No one has mined for gold in Kansas since 1929, when invest US$50 million gold-shale shares to build a better uni- two Coloradans claimed to have found a secret extractive versity in Topeka. process and “unlimited capital” near the Smoky Hill River – Beam sold Close and Holliday the Kansas rights to the although nothing ever came of it. Smoky Hill City is now a Beam process and in 1899 the pair bought the machinery ghost town. CIM
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