CIM Magazine November 2016 by CIM-ICM Publications

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Courtesy of TMAC Resources

NOVEMBER | 2016 | NOVEMBRE

cover story

Hope for the future As TMAC Resources’ Hope Bay gold mine nears start up, the seasoned team behind it is intent on making the region of Nunavut that hosts the project Canada’s next great mining camp By Correy Baldwin

38 Floating new ideas Buoyed by pressure to cut costs and improve recovery, new flotation technologies are on the rise By Eavan Moore

51 Solving the selenium problem The science behind selenium in the environment is young and the technology is even younger, but for miners managing it is an immediate concern By Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco

32-37 Logistics Creative solutions to moving materials By Eavan Moore, Kate Sheridan and Tom DiNardo

54 CMP 2017 Conference Program November • Novembre 2016 | 5

CIM MAGAZINE NOVEMBER | 2016 | NOVEMBRE

8 10 12

Editor’s letter President’s notes Chatter tools of the trade 14 The best in new technology Compiled by Cecilia Keating developments 16 Despite the frustrated peace agreement in Colombia, Canadian miners see progress By Sahar Fatima 17 Briefs 20 Miners meet roadblocks as they try to collect on international arbitration wins By Joel Barde 23 Efficiency and performance the ethos at latest Minexpo

By Ryan Bergen

Structural failures led to Samarco dam failure: report By Eavan Moore

columns 28 The road to autonomy By François Gariépy 30 Retain employees through well-managed maternity and parental leave By Kim Allen technical abstracts 79 CIM Journal 80 Canadian Metallurgical Quarterly mining lore 82 During the critical battles of World War One, skilled miners – many of them Canadian – made Allied victories possible By Cecilia Keating

contenu francophone

58 59 60

63 64

66 67 69

Table des matières Lettre de l’éditeur | Mot du président Des sociétés minières se heurtent à des obstacles en tentant de percevoir les sommes accordées dans le cadre de décisions d’arbitrage internationales Par Joel Barde Efficacité et rendement : la philosophie du dernier Minexpo Par Ryan Bergen

Taux de participation record à la conférence IMPC à Québec Par Tom DiNardo En route vers l’autonomie Par François Gariépy Préserver votre base d’employés en gérant intelligemment les congés parental et de maternité Par Kim Allen article de fond De nouvelles idées en matière de flottation Submergées par la pression visant à réduire les coûts et à améliorer la récupération, les technologies innovantes de flottation sont en pleine expansion Par Eavan Moore

L’équipe de TMAC Resources sera bientôt en mesure d’extraire l’or des filons riches de Hope Bay, et elle espère pouvoir poursuivre ses activités pendant de nombreuses années Par Correy Baldwin

La version française intégrale du CIM Magazine est disponible en ligne : magazine.CIM.org/fr-CA November • Novembre 2016 | 6

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8 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

Be st

An aerial view of the Hope Bay site taken in 2014 Courtesy of TMAC Resources

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here is no place on earth that fights harder to get your attention than Las Vegas. The lights, the shows, the threequarter-scale replicas of modern and ancient monuments. With each visit it seems the time it takes for sights that initially stopped you in your tracks to simply blend into the background becomes shorter. I do not envy those in the marketing departments, working in this setting, who must capture the notice of their target audience among the 44,000 people who walked the Minexpo floors in September. A job made more difficult by the reality that marketing budgets are tighter and staffing leaner than the last time the service and supply sector convened in Nevada in 2012. While I did detect a little weariness in the eyes of some marketing directors, the spectacle, which included a wedding atop a haul truck, celebrity drivers and in my own case an extensive one-on-one chat about lubricant quality with a reality TV star, matched the occasion. Through the many press releases and presentations “digital” asserted itself as the main preoccupation of original equipment manufacturers. The term casts a wide net meant to capture the evolving opportunities to improve operational performance through data analytics as well as those related to equipment and process automation. While it is convenient to rope these interests together, as François Gariépy notes in his column “The road to autonomy” (pg. 28), the conclusion after careful analysis could be that the advantages of automation do not outpace its cost. His argument articulates the shift in perspective that is necessary before mine operations can deploy the most useful of the myriad new technologies available to them. It is a shift that has begun as much of the talk at Minexpo left behind the utopian language used to inspire technology adoption and focused on the situation-specific opportunities, the limits and the unanswered questions related to those technologies. The current hard times have played a part in moving the discussion from why novel approaches ought to be tried to how. Now that suppliers have miners’ attention, we will be watching closely to see which ideas squander that attention and which succeed in holding it.

ia ed

Dispatch from the desert

Editor-in-chief Ryan Bergen, rbergen@cim.org Executive editor Angela Hamlyn, ahamlyn@cim.org Managing editor Andrea Nichiporuk, anichiporuk@cim.org Section editor Tom DiNardo, tdinardo@cim.org Junior section editor Kelsey Rolfe, krolfe@cim.org Copy editor Marilena Lucci, mlucci@cim.org Web content editor Maria Olaguera, molaguera@cim.org Contributing editors Peter Braul, pbraul@cim.org; Eavan Moore, emoore@cim.org Editorial intern Cecilia Keating Digitization technician Marie-Ève Lapierre, melapierre@cim.org Contributors Kim Allen, Correy Baldwin, Joel Barde, Sahar Fatima, François Gariépy, Sara King-Abadi, Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco, Eavan Moore, Kate Sheridan, Kylie Williams Editorial advisory board Alicia Ferdinand, Garth Kirkham, Vic Pakalnis, Steve Rusk, Nathan Stubina Translations CNW, Karen Rolland

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president’s notes

Different talents, better results

“Special regard should be given to candidates whose backgrounds are different than those of the past.”

Diversity is drawing a lot of attention today. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been a strong proponent, demonstrating tangible action with his cabinet appointments. And, perhaps when you read this note, there will be a female United States President-elect. You would be hard pressed, however, to find much mining news touting such progress. Last year, I accepted the role of CIM President on short notice when the female candidate had to step down. I represent the industry’s status quo – white, middle-aged, straight and male – but I have made a personal commitment to promote diversity in CIM and the mining industry. This is not new for me as I have worked with very talented women, indigenous people and other minorities within mining to support their development. The best mill manager I ever had was a woman I recruited from Australia to work at the Campbell Mine in Red Lake. She improved processing performance year after year as we set new production records. Our industry has quite a way to go to have a diverse mix of employees that can bring different talents to produce better results. As I mentioned in my previous Notes, we now need to make a concentrated effort to hire students and new graduates during the current downturn. Special regard should be given to candidates whose backgrounds are different than those of the past. In Canada, support from indigenous groups is required to successfully advance resource projects. There are strategic advantages to having indigenous employees within mining companies whose experiences and perspectives can help navigate the complex challenges of project development. Within CIM, we have to walk the talk on diversity. Within our Montreal national office, we have a two-to-one ratio of female to male employees. In 2018, Janice Zinck of Natural Resources Canada will take on the CIM presidency. CIM has had an active Diversity Advisory Committee since 2013. At MEMO 2016 in Sudbury, there was a special diversity and inclusion panel discussion. CIM will also continue to support Women in Mining and Women Who Rock initiatives. As a CIM member, please join me in promoting diversity within our organization and the mining industry!

Michael Winship CIM President @CIMPrez

10 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

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Mine Development & Construction • Shaft Sinking • Raise Boring • Feasibility & Design Engineering

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chatter

RE: HANDLING INNOVATION (JUNE/JULY ’16)

#Conveyor tech hasn’t fundamentally changed in 100 yrs. #Bulk handling is due some attention and #innovation – The Cornish Engineer, @cornishengineer

RE: THE EVOLUTION OF AUTONOMY (SEPT/OCT ’16)

Mines using autonomous vehicles achieve productivity benefits that go to the bottom line. – Laurie Barlow, @barlowlauriem

FACEBOOK facebook.com/CIMMag/ facebook.com/CIM.ICM/ LINKEDIN linkedin.com/groups/40506/ INSTAGRAM instagram.com/cim_mag

RE: RAISING THE STAKES (AUGUST ‘16)

What is the role of Prospectors in the 21st century? How can #pdac help? Send me your thoughts. – Nadim Kara, @nadimkaraPDAC

RE: THE INCLUSION IMPERATIVE (AUGUST ‘16)

@bigseanwilly calls for fair inclusion of Canada's indigenous peoples in resource sector – Mining Shared Value, @ewb_msv

RE: CAN YOU DIG IT? (SEPT/OCT ‘16)

YOUTUBE youtube.com/canadianinstituteofmining

Mohammad is a PhD @ubcengineering candidate, check out his interview with the CIM Magazine. – UBC Engineering, @ubcengineering

RYAN BERGEN @Ryan_CIM_Mag

ANGELA HAMLYN @AngelaH_CIM

RE: DESIGN CHANGES FROM THE TOP DOWN (AUGUST ‘16)

Low cost underground mining technique. Top down mining lower risk and quicker to market – Laurie Barlow, @barlowlauriem

ANDREA NICHIPORUK @Andrea_CIM_Mag

TOM DiNARDO @Tom_CIM_Mag

EATING OUR YOUNG (SEPT/OCT ‘16) CIM President Michael Winship’s president’s note in the Sept/Oct ‘16 issue, “Eating our young,” prompted many responses. “Excellent points here...indeed, I have built a company around this issue,” Strata Geodata Services principal consultant Andy Randell tweeted. “Something has to be done about employing our young mining & met grads,” agreed recruitment consultant Frank Principe on Twitter. On LinkedIn, retired mining professional Robert Seitz wrote, “We have been saying for years not to repeat the failure of vision that has resulted in [our] existing situation. Some companies are looking ahead, while others are repeating the past and will be complaining and looking to other companies for people in future years.” Those at risk of being gobbled up also weighed in. Several students and recent graduates from the University of Saskatchewan’s geological engineering program gave their takes. “If there is more of a willingness by the mining sector to hire geoscience graduates in other labour roles to gain experience and stay with the industry, I would very much take that opportunity,” wrote student Jason Vanin. To read more responses from students and graduates, check out CIM’s News page at CIM.org.

PHOTO CHALLENGE CLOSED The CIM Magazine photo contest has closed and we are currently reviewing the submissions. Thanks to everyone who participated! Check out the next issue of the magazine for the winning photo. 12 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

KELSEY ROLFE @kelseyarolfe

MARIA OLAGUERA @Maria_CIM_Mag

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tools of the trade

Courtesy of RCT

Courtesy of Sena Technologies

Replacing cables in a mine shaft can be an onerous and lengthy operation, requiring multiple workers and pieces of equipment to transport huge reels. Every minute the process takes and the shaft remains inactive, profit is lost. Fortis believes its motorized Mobile Reel Handler will make re-roping faster and more efficient. “It can save mines large sums of money and be a safer alternative,” said Fortis owner Gerry Clarke. From the driver’s seat, a single operator can pick up a reel using the machine’s two independent hydraulic arms, transport it to its destination, and carefully unroll it using a built-in braking mechanism. The reel handler can be used both above and below ground, but Clarke said he believes it “shines” underground. “It can rope up shafts and move reels that would be otherwise difficult to move,” he said. One side of the back end can be removed to fit down mineshafts and can be re-assembled in minutes by two operators. Although designed to work with large reels of wire rope, the machine is equipped to handle any material under 41,000 pounds and less than 104 inches wide.

Can you hear me now?

Universal monitoring

In loud mining environments, clear communication is key to a safe and smooth operation. Sena Technologies’ new TuffTalk headset has a hard hat mount and a heavy duty design to withstand rough mine conditions. It has a 1.4-kilometre Bluetooth intercom range – the longest on the market – and Sena’s marketing manager Leah Langford said she believes it will “keep everyone on the same page and safe.” Workers can communicate uninterrupted via a universal intercom with up to four other headsets. The headset can also be connected to two-way radios, or paired with smartphones via Bluetooth. Sturdy muffs protect users’ ears from harmful and distracting background noise, while an ambient mode feature allows operators to amplify crucial external sounds. Operators can communicate and make and receive phone calls hands-free using the headset’s glove-friendly dials.

An inadequately monitored fleet can result in high costs for mines; over-servicing interrupts operation, under-servicing can shorten a machine’s lifespan, and idle and damaged machines waste production time and fuel. RCT’s new EarthTrack Fleet Management Solution gives management personnel relevant production and utilization data to help cut costs and boost productivity, according to Mick Tanner, mining and resources product manager. “[EarthTrack] only delivers relevant data that can be tailored to suit specific areas of concern to the end users,” he said. “For example, machine idling time, machine utilization reports, payload and impact monitoring, all of which can help businesses deliver a better bottom line profit.” The system can be installed on any machine across a fleet and its interactive dashboard can be accessed by any smart device with Internet, via a secure login. EarthTrack “is universal over all machine types and brands, which allows mine management to gather all data into one area – making it very easy to analyze equipment both individually and as a group,” Tanner said. Other key features include instantaneous alerts for serious issues, data on operator performance, and the ability to implement and adjust speed limits in different areas of the mine site.

Compiled by Cecilia Keating 14 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

Courtesy of Fortis

The reel deal

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Miners meet roadblocks trying to collect on international arbitration wins

Efficiency and performance the ethos at latest Minexpo

Kirkland Lake Gold wins International Mines Rescue Competition

Structural flaws led to Samarco dam failure: report

Developments The peace puzzle Despite the frustrated peace agreement in Colombia, Canadian miners see progress

Canadian miners continue to wait for stability to unlock Colombia’s mining potential after Colombians rejected a historic peace deal between the government and the nation’s largest rebel group in October. The September ceasefire agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) would have ended 52 years of armed conflict and political instability that has prevented oil and mining companies from accessing resource-rich land, and has enabled illegal artisanal mining on land owned by foreign corporations. But in a national plebiscite, 50.2 per cent of Colombians voted against the deal, brokered by President Juan Manuel Santos with FARC leader Timoleon Jimenez. Critics said it went too easy on the Marxist guerilla group. Under the deal, FARC would have disarmed and surrendered its weapons and in exchange, its members would have been guaranteed 10 seats in Congress and received more lenient sentences or avoided jail time for crimes including murder, kidnapping and drug trafficking. Though the deal fell through, FARC leaders have said they still want peace and have no plans to resume fighting, and President Santos, who won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize in October for clinching the deal, is continuing to search for solutions. 16 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

Courtesy of Continental Gold

By Sahar Fatima

Continental Gold recently enlisted University of British Columbia professor Marcello Veiga to help create a strategy for traditional miners working on its Buriticá property in Colombia.

Most existing mining operations are not in FARC-held areas, said Ari Sussman, CEO of Continental Gold, which has projects in Colombia. But the ceasefire would have opened up those conflict zones to exploration. “I think they will [open up], it’s just put a delay on it,” Sussman said. “There are a lot of questions right now and the smart move is to just wait and see until you start to hear some information.” Continental Gold’s Berlin exploration project is in a FARC-held area of Antioquia and cannot be accessed, Sussman

said. The company did exploration work on the 38,000-hectare project in 2008 and 2009, but by 2010 FARC had gained a larger presence in Antioquia, raising safety concerns for tourists and business alike. A ceasefire would have been welcome news for renewing Continental’s efforts at the mine, Sussman said, but “now we’re going to wait.” “We need to understand a little better how it’s going to play out first.” Sussman said the plebiscite’s outcome was “a big positive” because it will push the government to seek wider input toward a solution.

developments “The people’s voice is going to be listened to,” he said. “They didn’t vote against peace. They voted against certain aspects of the agreement.” In fact, a trend toward peace has been making Colombia increasingly attractive to foreign mining companies for several years, said Marcello Veiga, a mining engineering professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC), who has consulted with both mining companies and NGOs on mine development challenges in the country. Crime has sparked safety concerns for decades – including a 2010 incident when a Canadian executive with Braeval Mining Corp. was kidnapped and held for seven months by a different rebel group – but Veiga said the number of incidents is on the decline. “Colombia is the best place to invest in mining in the world now. It’s peaceful, it’s not very well known, the government is investing a lot in infrastructure […] There’s a good momentum,” he said. But as Canadian companies wait and watch, Veiga warned the largest threat to foreign projects in the country is still artisanal, or traditional, mining. While many artisanal miners are legitimate and licensed, a large portion illegally work on land owned by companies. They take their ores to processing centres – often run by criminal organizations and rebel groups, includ-

Federal government announces carbon pricing scheme Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a national carbon pricing scheme in early October that would require all provinces and territories to have a carbon price or cap-and-trade system in place by 2018, or adopt the federal government’s “floor price” of $10 per tonne of CO2 in 2018, increasing to $50 per tonne in 2022. “If neither price nor cap-and-trade is in place by 2018, the government of Canada will implement a price in that jurisdiction,” Trudeau announced. He

ing the FARC – that pollute the environment on a massive scale by dumping mercury and cyanide into the water. Veiga said Canadian companies looking to invest in Colombia should be aware of how to engage with the existing network of artisanal miners. “It’s a good chance for Canadian mining companies to make some kind of agreement or deal with artisanal miners to establish an operation there,” he said. “I don’t recommend any Canadian company to go to Colombia and start to just do the same classical process that they have in Canada because most of the areas with gold now are occupied by artisanal miners.” There is also the added social context of local populations being wary of foreigners. Veiga raised the irony of locals complaining about “the big Canadian company” polluting their land, even as artisanal miners dump toxic tailings into their water. “The situation is not environmental, it’s social,” he said. “The local communities see artisanal miners just bringing more benefits for the locals than a big Canadian company. We have to work with them and just show the benefits that a Canadian company is going to bring.” It is a challenge Continental Gold has already grappled with at its Buriticá

project where illegal miners were accessing veins the company had already defined. Sussman said they were also spreading negative sentiments about Continental’s project, and their mining methods were polluting the water at the site and in nearby communities. The government stepped in and the illegal miners and their families moved away with the help of a third-party NGO that made sure they had food, water and psychological support, Sussman said. In the aftermath, Continental Gold enlisted Veiga and UBC to help formalize traditional miners working in the area for years into companies that could legally work on Continental’s land. About 80 per cent of gold mined in Colombia is illegal and the practice is now more lucrative than the cocaine trade, according to the Global Initiative Against Organized Crime. FARC is one of the biggest supporters of artisanal mining in Colombia, and government estimates suggest 20 per cent of the group’s funding comes from gold mined illegally. A peace settlement between the rebel group and the government could help curb that illegal mining, Sussman said. “It won’t go away completely but it will reduce,” he said. CIM

said the policy will be revenue-neutral for the federal government, with all revenue generated staying in the provinces and territories. Canada’s mining sector emits greenhouse gases (GHG) primarily though the consumption of fossil fuels, and the Canadian Industrial End Use Data Analysis Centre reports that the sector was responsible for around one per cent of total GHG emissions in 2014. The Mining Association of Canada (MAC) voiced its support for a national price on carbon in April, but noted after Trudeau’s announcement that the proposed scheme includes only one of the seven principles the association

issued on climate change policy design. Among the other suggestions were investing policy-related revenue into the “transition to a lower carbon future,” addressing competitiveness concerns across all sectors, having flexibility to changing conditions and supporting lower-emission generation technologies and early adopters. “It’s critical that any carbon price regime consider all of the principles to ensure it is successful in meaningfully reducing emissions, while supporting economic growth across the country,” MAC CEO Pierre Gratton said in response to the federal government’s announcement. November • Novembre 2016 | 17

According to MAC, 93 of Canada’s 121 metal and non-metal mines are currently operating in a jurisdiction where there is an established price on carbon, or a commitment to implement one. British Columbia introduced a carbon levy in 2008, and Quebec has used a cap-and-trade system since 2013. Both Alberta and Ontario will launch

On September 12 Mark Hill rejoined Barrick Gold as the company’s first chief investment officer. Executive chairman John Thornton said the position was created to “reflect the belief that effective capital allocation is a core responsibility of the head office.” George Bee was appointed senior vicepresident for district development at the company’s Pascua-Lama project the same day. Operations at Barrick Gold’s Argentinian Veladero mine were suspended from Sept. 15 to Oct. 4 after falling ice damaged a pipe, leaking process solution over the mine’s leach pad area. It is not yet known how the two-week shutdown will affect the mine’s production. Last March, Barrick paid a $9.8-million fine for a cyanide leak at Veladero in September 2015. Iamgold signed an agreement in late August with the Suriname government to acquire an interest in the Saramacca property located in the north of the country, close to Iamgold’s Rosebel mill. It is also close to the Sarafina property optioned to the company. The terms of the agreement include an initial payment of $200,000. Orezone Gold revealed in August that there is much less gold than previously estimated in its Bomboré project in Burkina Faso. The most recent mineral resource estimation indicates approximately 30 per cent less. The latest figures show 1,355,000 ounces of oxide and transitional Measured and Indicated Mineral Resource, down from 1,964,000 reported in 2013. Gold mining veteran Lauren Roberts will become COO of Kinross Gold Corporation on Jan. 1, 2017, replacing current COO and executive vice-president Warwick Morley-Jepsen, who is leaving “to pursue new opportunities.” Roberts has worked at Kinross since 2004 and is currently senior vice-president of corporate development.

18 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

carbon pricing schemes in 2017. Ministers from three of the provinces yet to introduce carbon pricing schemes – Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador – walked out of a meeting with Environment Minister Catherine McKenna on the day of the announcement, in protest of the new plan. – Kylie Williams

Courtesy of PotashCorp

FROM THE WIRE

Post-merger, PotashCorp will be able to absorb Agrium’s mines and sell its own potash, nitrogen and phosphate assets directly through Agrium’s retail network.

Potash producers join forces PotashCorp and Agrium announced on Sept. 12 that they agreed to a “merger of equals,” forming a Canadian agricultural giant that will combine PotashCorp’s vast potash mines with Agrium’s lucrative farming retail business. The so-far unnamed company will be the largest crop nutrient factory in the world, with an enterprise value of $36 billion. It will have close to 20,000 employees in more than 18 countries. PotashCorp shareholders will enjoy a 52 per cent stake in the new company, with Agrium shareholders holding the rest. The new company will have Agrium’s current CEO and PotashCorp’s current CFO. The board of directors will equally split, and PotashCorp’s CEO will be executive chairman.

Scotiabank analyst Ben Isaacson said he believes Agrium will have the upper hand. “Once the dust has settled and the integration is complete, which may take some years, it really will be an Agrium-run company,” he said. While both companies have potash, nitrogen and phosphate mines, 67 per cent of Agrium’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2016 have been generated by its retail business. Post-merger, PotashCorp will be able to absorb Agrium’s mines and sell its own potash, nitrogen and phosphate assets directly through Agrium’s retail network, which includes 1,400 facilities worldwide. Meanwhile the benefit for Agrium is less clear and has puzzled analysts. Potash prices have fallen 34 per cent in the past year. In October

developments PotashCorp shares were trading around $21, a precipitous drop from $46 in early 2015. Isaacson believes Agrium is thinking long-term and capitalizing on the miner’s current market valuation. “Agrium is using this bottom of the cycle valuation to merge. Once the cycle comes back they’ll look much stronger,” he said. Isaacson said he expects potash prices will rise when the market is less saturated. According to PotashCorp spokesman Randy Burton, the new company is expected to generate up to $500 million of annual savings from “synergies,” primarily from “distribution and retail integration, production and optimization [of operating expenses], and procurement.” The

Kirkland Lake Gold scoops up Newmarket Gold Kirkland Lake Gold will acquire Australian junior miner Newmarket Gold in a share exchange worth $1 billion, the company announced on Sept. 29. The combined company, which will retain Kirkland Lake’s name, will produce about 500,000 ounces of gold each year and have a market cap of about $2 billion. Eric Sprott will be the new company’s chairman. “This is a good marriage between two very good companies that are profitable and generating cash flow,” said Kirkland Lake CEO Tony Makuch. Kirkland Lake Gold’s flagship project, the Macassa mine, has Proven and Probable Reserves of 2.4 million tonnes of gold at a grade of 15.8 grams per tonne as of January 2015. Newmarket’s key operation, Fosterville, has nearly 1.1 million tonnes at 6.95 grams per tonne in Proven and Probable Reserves, according to a March 2016 report. Across all of Newmarket’s operations, the company reported all-in sustaining costs (AISC) between US$900 and US$975 per ounce; Kirkland Lake Gold’s company-wide AISC is about US$925. The combined

majority of the savings “are unrelated to headcount,” Burton said, but the company does foresee some staff reductions through attrition and reduced hiring. Both companies need two thirds of their respective shareholders to approve the deal. Votes will take place on Nov. 3 in Saskatoon for PotashCorp and on the same day in Calgary for Agrium. According to Isaacson, the deal will be a “tougher sell” for Agrium shareholders, who are being asked to shift their investment from a reliable retail enterprise to a more volatile commodity. The deal is expected to close in mid-2017, subject to review from Canadian and international regulators. – Cecilia Keating

company’s AISC is expected to be below US$1,015 per ounce. Makuch said he hoped the deal, structured as a reverse takeover, would create value for shareholders of both companies by attracting a different kind of investor to the merged entity. “Some funds won’t invest in junior companies, they have limitations on size,” he said. Makuch said new investments will allow the company to continue diamond drilling operations, which he called “one of the core competencies of the company,” from a position of greater financial security. “You’re always limited in terms of money to invest in diamond drilling for new discoveries and resource growth,” he said. Larger companies are also more protected from investors’ reactions to fluctuations in the market. “By being a larger company, we have the ability to weather a storm a bit better.” Newmarket first approached Kirkland Lake about a deal after Makuch joined the company this summer, he said. The merged company will be headquartered in Toronto, but the projects will continue to operate autonomously. The deal is still pending shareholder approval. – Kate Sheridan

FROM THE WIRE Deep sea miner Ocean Minerals, LLC signed an agreement with the Cook Islands government in late September for the exclusive rights to prospect and explore for rare earth elements and scandium in the country’s deep sea beds. Ocean Minerals was set up this year and is focusing exclusively on this project. The company has entered into a licensing agreement with fellow Houston-based ocean-mining technology firm Deep Reach Technology for the study. The Centre for Research in Occupational Safety and Health (CROSH) at Laurentian University has appointed former Sudbury mayor Marianne Matichuk as its first chief administrative officer. Matichuk’s role will include continuing the centre’s research and work with the mining industry. CROSH works to research and eliminate occupational injury and disease from northern Ontario’s industry. Recent projects included a study on mining and mental health. McEwen Mining announced two senior staff changes in August and September, appointing Xavier Ochoa as COO and Donald Brown as senior vice-president of projects. Ochoa has 25 years of mining experience and has held senior executive positions with Goldcorp, Glencore and Xstrata. Brown has held the same position at Glencore and prior to that was construction manager for Bechtel Mines and Metals. Eldorado Gold budgeted for an extra 7,500 metres of drilling in 2016 and a fourth drill rig at its new Karavansalija Mineralized Centre (KMC) project in Serbia after positive results from the first eleven drill holes in September. The project now has a budget of over $5 million for 2016. KMC was announced in August alongside three other new Eldorado Gold exploration projects in Brazil and Romania.

Compiled by Cecilia Keating

November • Novembre 2016 | 19

Balance due Miners meet roadblocks as they try to collect on international arbitration wins

A recent spate of international arbitration wins for mining companies has highlighted the challenge inherent in the dispute resolution method: getting foreign countries to pay up. Vancouver-based Rusoro Mining won a major arbitration decision against Venezuela in late August, proving the Venezuelan government illegally expropriated two of its gold mines in 2011. The company launched the arbitration in 2012 under a Venezuela-Canada bilateral investment treaty and was awarded US$1.2 billion in damages. In a statement on the win, Rusoro CEO Andre Agapov thanked shareholders for their support through the “prolonged and difficult process” of arbitration and said Rusoro “looks forward to collecting the award.” Under President Hugo Chavez, resource-rich Venezuela nationalized huge swaths of its economy, including its oil and gold sectors, resulting in more than 20 cases of arbitration. The Rusoro award is the latest in a series of major wins for resource companies: in 2014 Exxon Mobil won US$1.6 billion; Gold Reserve Inc. won US$740 million in 2015; and Crystallex International Corp. was awarded US$1.4 billion earlier this year. In recent years, miners have also won sizable awards against other countries, including Mongolia and South Africa. According to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a World Bank agency that administers 70 per cent of arbitrations between investors and states, international arbitration is a booming business. ICSID went from administering 118 disputes in its 2006 fiscal year to administering 247 in its most recent year ending June 30, 2016, 20 per cent of which were put forth by extractive sector companies. The increasing use of the dispute resolution method and the huge sums being awarded have led some to refer to the past ten years as a “golden age” for 20 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

Courtesy of Khan Resources

By Joel Barde

Toronto-based Khan Resources began arbitration with the Mongolian government after the licences for its Dornod uranium project in eastern Mongolia were rescinded.

international arbitration. But the system can also be challenging, especially when it comes to collecting awards. While databases listing arbitration awards are easy enough to consult, those that track actual payment of the awards are not, observed University of Victoria professor and international arbitration expert Andrew Newcombe. “As far as I know there has not been any good empirical work done on actual payment, since what happens is often confidential.” Payment is most secure in cases where both the home nation of the investor and the nation being sued have ratified the ICSID Convention (153 nations including Canada have signed on but Venezuela has not). In such cases, ICSID lays out a framework for negotiations and investors benefit from a “special feature” of the convention, which compels payment and precludes local courts from overturning the decision. In arbitrations where only one of the involved countries has ratified the ICSID Convention, ICSID still facilitates the process — but investors do not benefit from the special feature. In such scenarios (and when neither has ratified it) arbitrations are negotiated according to

processes laid out in bilateral trade agreements and collecting payment is often difficult – especially in cases where the country being sued is chaotic and financially-strapped. Venezuela has decried the awards against it and so far has refused to pay Exxon and Crystallex, though it struck a deal with Gold Reserve that gives the government a 55 per cent stake in the company. The first instalment of US$600 million was due at the end of October, after press time. Companies that win awards can still force payment. Using the 1958 New York Convention, which has been ratified by more than 150 countries, including Venezuela, and began as a way to resolve business-to-business arbitrations, they can search out and seize foreign commercial assets or monies of a country, provided they are found within countries that ratified the convention. But the process is challenging and expensive. The investor must persuade courts in the countries where assets are located to allow seizure. Countries that owe large sums of money often take measures to protect their assets by hiding them or parking them in jurisdictions where they will not be seized. In

developments some cases, investors are forced to launch expensive cases in numerous countries. “Trying to find a billion dollars anywhere is not easy,” says Armand de Mestral, an international arbitration expert who teaches at McGill University’s faculty of law. Moreover, companies are prohibited from seizing sovereign assets, like an embassy, military equipment or government money parked abroad. “The best thing to take would be a tanker full of crude oil – or a tanker itself,” said de Mestral, speaking about options available to companies seeking money from Venezuela. As international arbitration has grown in popularity, so too has the criticism against it. Critics charge that the threat of it makes developing countries wary of introducing reasonable regulations investors may object to and favours multinational companies, who have the money to pay for the expensive litigation.

The criticisms are especially pronounced in Europe, where states are under pressure to limit what companies can win. Joshua Karton, a Queen’s University law professor who specializes in international arbitration, said in recent years arbitrators are doing a better job of balancing the interests of countries and investors. “I think the more recent cases are moving away from a more pro-investor perspective,” said Karton, who points to the Rusoro decision as an example of the broader trend. Venezuela was found liable for only expropriation without due payment. On all of Rusoro’s other claims, the arbitral tribunal found in favour of Venezuela. “There is language throughout the decision to the effect that states need some leeway to regulate in the public interest,” said Karton. Given the extraordinary costs associated with seizing commercial assets, companies often turn to negotiations to settle disputes.

Grant Edey, CEO of Khan Resources, has direct experience. In 2009, Mongolia rescinded licences for Khan’s Dornod uranium project. Two years later – after winning a case in Mongolian court that was not honoured – Khan started arbitration with Mongolia in Paris. Four years after that, it won an award of US$100 million, less than half of its original claim of US$350 million. “There’s so much process involved. It becomes quite frustrating,” said Edey. Khan went to shareholders on three separate occasions to raise money to fund the litigation. But even after the win, Mongolia resisted payment and tried to overturn the decision in French courts. Finally, in March, after six separate negotiations, Mongolia agreed to pay Khan US$70 million. Edey feels the timing – three days before the 2016 PDAC Convention – was no coincidence. “They wanted to encourage direct investment. They had a reason to settle.” By mid-May the balance had been paid. CIM

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Laurentian receives historic donation for mineral exploration research program The single largest investment in Laurentian University’s history will go toward revolutionizing mineral exploration in Canada’s north. The Sudbury school’s Metal Earth project will receive $104 million from a combination of government and industry partners, Laurentian announced at the beginning of September. Research that comes out of Metal Earth aims to improve the efficiency of mine discoveries in Canada by better understanding the Precambrian rock of the Canadian Shield to learn why any two areas that appear similar may not contain the same metal endowments. “A large part of exploration is finding the right area,” said Dr. Harold Gibson, director of the Mineral Explo-

ration Research Centre (MERC) at the newly-christened Harquail School of Earth Sciences and lead of Metal Earth. “You can spend millions of dollars doing this and use a lot of time.” Gibson also hopes the research will increase discovery rates in Canada. “The slump we have is because of the metal prices at the moment,” he said, “but what we saw before that [was] there was an incredible amount of dollars being spent on exploration and for the first time there was no major increase in discoveries.” A $49.2-million grant from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) made up close to half of the funding for the initiative. Another $55 million came from 22 partners who donated both cash and in-kind contributions, like the geological surveys of Canada, Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. The Department of Earth Sciences received an additional $10 million

from Franco-Nevada Corporation CEO David Harquail and his family on the same day, and has been renamed the Harquail School of Earth Sciences. The majority of the donation will go toward an endowment fund for international PhD students as well as lab equipment and research technicians. “We’re one of the few universities in the world where, when you look at its strategic plan, it has very clear focus in mineral exploration and mining,” Laurentian’s president and vice chancellor, Dominic Giroux, said of the award. “We are sitting on top of one of the best ore bodies in the world. Mining and mineral exploration is in our DNA.” Canada is the best place for this research thanks to the exposed shield, well-preserved rock and world-class deposits, according to Gibson. The data should be applicable to northern Canada and other shields around the world.

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developments As part of the funding, the university will receive a new research chair in exploration targeting and three fac-

ulty members in Precambrian geology, earth systems modelling and exploration geophysics, in addition to

postdoctoral fellows, students, research assistants, technicians and – Sara King-Abadi support staff.

Cost-consciousness in Sin City Efficiency and performance the ethos at latest Minexpo By Ryan Bergen

Major manufacturers showcased their big equipment at Minexpo, but Caterpillar’s resource industries president Denise Johnson noted that “not a lot of big iron is being sold” right now.

Neal Young

Downturn be damned, the quadrennial Minexpo International in Las Vegas remains the destination for the mining supply and services sector to show off its latest developments. What has changed since the many companies last gathered is the direction they have taken. While all the major manufacturers had their big equipment on hand to add shine to the tradeshow floor, Denise Johnson, resource industries president for Caterpillar, noted at a press event prior to the late-September show, “not a lot of big iron is being sold.” Four years ago “it was all about throughput,” observed Roland Ehrl, executive vice-president for Siemens’ mineral division. “Now it is productivity, which has been low, and that has been complicated by decreasing grades. Today, the request is for improved asset health and performance. There is a move to predictive maintenance to keep the equipment running.” Tom Bluth, Caterpillar’s vice-president of surface mining and technology, echoed that appraisal. “The R&D focus is on retrofits, how to increase operating performance of existing fleets.” Looking to the future, the emphasis landed squarely on automation. Komatsu rolled out its purpose-built autonomous haul truck. The cabless 230-tonne hauler features four-wheel drive and steering, and is designed to be driven in either direction, thereby eliminating the need to turn to back into the load-spotting area next to the excavator. The truck, dubbed the Innovative Autonomous Haulage Vehicle, does not yet have a market release date. Nevertheless, it stands as a monument to the surging interest in autonomous operations and robotics, a category of

exhibitors at Minexpo that has doubled in size since 2012. Overall, there were 1,953 companies exhibiting across 840,000 square feet of floor space inside and outside of the Las Vegas Convention Center. At the opening plenary, which set the framework for the three-day show, Hecla Mining CEO Phillips S. Baker Jr. observed the industry is on the verge of transformation. “We are on the cusp of changes we haven’t seen in 25 to 30 years,” he said, highlighting the converging influences of an emerging work force that has grown up with network technology and the drive to expand automation. He envisioned a nearfuture where “people are still working in mining, but they are going to be doing different, safer jobs.” Fellow panellist Joy Global CEO Ted Doheny agreed the overarching focus for the industry will be greater automation as well as increasing underground

operations, and reduction of the needless handling of waste rock. For underground mining, the array of battery-powered options has continued to expand, due in large part to the savings in ventilation costs that emission-free vehicles provide. Sandvik made its entry into the electric LHD market with the launch of the LH307B, a 6.7-tonne capacity loader. The manufacturer opted to use a lithium titanate oxide (LTO) battery, which, while more expensive, Sandvik regards as the safest lithium-ion option. The battery provides two hours of operation before it must be recharged, a process which takes approximately 15 minutes and does not require the time and equipment to swap batteries. Patrick Murphy, Sandvik’s president of rock drills and technologies, said the power pack is expected to last the life of the loader, estimated to be between 20,000 and 30,000 hours. November • Novembre 2016 | 23

Kirkland Lake Gold wins International Mines Rescue Competition An Ontario mine rescue team was crowned the winner of the 2016 International Mines Rescue Competition (IMRC), held in Canada for the first time in August. Kirkland Lake Gold’s team is the first ever Canadian winner of the prestigious biennial competition, often described as the “Olympics of mining rescue.” The event was hosted by Ontario Mine Rescue and Workplace Safety North and conducted at various sites in Sudbury from August 19 to 26. The competition “couldn’t have gone any better,” said Ted Hanley, general manager of Ontario Mine Rescue. “The majority of feedback from competitors, rescuers and administrators from around the world was that they were pleased with the work we had done to create the most realistic competition that we could.” Rescue teams from 19 countries were evaluated as they tackled various mine rescue simulations. These were designed to test contestants’ underground firefighting and decision-making abilities, first aid response, rope skills and mastery of rescue and firefighting theory. One situation required a high-angle rope rescue while another included a live underground fire. Hanley highlighted the importance the competition had in bridging cultural differences and bringing professionals together from across the globe. “We had a military team from the Ukraine and a military team from Russia who were sharing beers and dragon 24 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

hauler by cutting fuel and maintenance expenses. “The days of allowing toxic diesel fumes in underground mines will soon end and will be memorialized in museums as a mining method from a primitive past,” declared the company’s CEO Mike Kasaba in the announcement of the vehicle launch. In the more immediate future, Caterpillar’s Johnson said she expects miners

will be more ready to spend on equipment. “Sustaining capex is set to increase in 2017.” While exhibiting companies outnumbered those at the 2012 exhibition, the 44,000 registered attendees did not match the 58,000 who made the trip four years ago, when the industry had just crested its most recent peak. CIM

Courtesy of Ken Sitter, Ontario Mine Rescue

Not content to simply supply battery packs to manufacturers such as Atlas Copco and RDH Mining Equipment, Artisan Vehicle Systems created its own lithium iron phosphate-powered LHD. According to John Gravelle, Artisan’s CFO, the 1.5-cubic-yard bucket with a three-tonne capacity is designed to compete head-to-head with the cost of operating a similar diesel-powered

Kirkland Lake Gold teammates carry an injured miner as part of the underground mine rescue scenario at the International Mines Rescue Competition, held in Sudbury in late August. Kirkland Lake was named the competition's overall winner.

OVERALL WINNERS 1st – Canada, Kirkland Lake Gold 2nd – Ireland, Boliden Tara Mines 3rd – Poland, KGHM White Eagles

boating by the end of the week,” he said. The competition provides an opportunity for mine rescue organizations to “share and improve mine rescue knowledge and practices through international cooperation,” according to the IMRC website. It was established after six Polish mine rescuers died of heat stress in a 1998 coal mine rescue – C. Keating operation.

Record turnout for IMPC in Quebec City Nearly 1,500 mineral processors from 54 countries convened in Quebec City to examine a number of pressing issues facing the industry at the bien-

nial meeting of the International Mineral Processing Congress (IMPC). The congress was held in Canada for the second time in its 55-year history. Hosted at the Quebec City Convention Center from Sept. 11-15, the congress tackled broad challenges in daily plenary presentations, including a session on the increasing cost of energy. To reduce these costs, Andrew Cooper, energy specialist at New Gold’s New Afton mine, said energy conservation must be integrated into workplace culture. “It’s people, not systems, that manage energy,” he said. Cooper credited this shift in culture to New Afton’s successful implementation of its ISO 50001-compliant energy management system. Innovation was also top of mind. Barun Gorain, director of strategic technology solutions at Barrick, questioned the current model in the mining industry. “A lot of time we focus [innovation research] on the mining trends,”

developments he said. “There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just that that’s limited to the existing paradigm. If we really want a breakthrough, it has to be done differently.” Gorain said Barrick has borrowed its innovation model from Silicon Valley tech companies by developing technology that balances what is needed with what is possible, as well as trying to reduce implementation time. The congress grappled with more sector-specific difficulties in its 14 technical streams, which included flotation, plant design and comminution. “I noted a clear swing to new equipment aimed at providing step change in comminution efficiency and upgrade via sorting,” said Malcolm Powell, professor of sustainable comminution at the University of Queensland. “I think this is a response to the driving need to reduce production costs, with the industry providing a strong pull for this, albeit with minimal funding.”

For the first time in its history, IMPC was held in conjunction with the 55th annual Conference of Metallurgists (COM) hosted by CIM’s Metallurgy and Materials Society. As a complement to the IMPC technical streams, COM provided four symposia on lightweight metals, iron control in hydrometallurgy, rare earths and electrometallurgy. The congress also included an extensive social program. For a taste of the local culture, delegates were invited to a Quebec cultural night to sample gourmet poutine, frozen maple syrup on a stick and local Quebec beers. At the closing banquet for the congress, Graeme Jameson of the University of Newcastle and Ponisseril Somasundaran of Columbia University were awarded lifetime achievement awards. The next IMPC will take place in Moscow from Sept. 15-21, 2018. – Tom DiNardo

Tanzanian inquiry probes deaths, injuries at Acacia’s North Mara mine Police have killed 65 locals and injured 270 more over the years Acacia Mining’s North Mara gold mine in Tanzania has been in operation, according to the findings of a government inquiry published in July. The Swahili-language document was obtained by The Globe and Mail, which reported the figures in late September. Barrick Gold owns a 63.9 per cent equity interest in Acacia, formerly African Barrick Gold. Violence at the mine site has previously erupted between the mine’s security force, Tanzanian police, and local villagers who attempt to break into the mine site to forage for valuable pieces of rock. An inquiry was set up by the Tanzanian ministry of energy and minerals in February to

November • Novembre 2016 | 25

investigate ongoing disputes, and commissioners visited North Mara in February and March. The commission comprised local elders, Acacia employees, government officials and politicians from outside the local area. Acacia refuted the majority of the claims reported in the Globe, saying the article was based “primarily on allegations by two anti-mining NGOs.” According to a company statement, the inquiry committee listened to “uncorroborated complaints” regarding police-related injuries and fatalities. It said the situation in North Mara has significantly improved over the past few years, with less than 10 intruders per month and only 15 per cent of fatalities being police-related. MiningWatch Canada and Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID), a British NGO, have been investigating the fraught situation at the gold mine for three years and have completed three field assessments in the area, most recently in July and August of this year. Catherine Coumans, MiningWatch Canada’s research coordinator, said she believes violence at the mine site is ongoing and that there needs to be “truly independent investigation into the excess use of force.” Coumans believes the report presents an inaccurate picture of the extent of violence at the mine, in part because injuries and deaths inflicted by the mine’s security-staff were not included in the commission’s report. She said the report is a “very strange document,” which omits key information, including the name of the ministry that ran the enquiry, commissioners’ names, timelines and the timeframe of the data. Acacia reported the inquiry in its mid-year note to investors, but did not mention the fatalities revealed in the report. North Mara, which opened in 2002, has been plagued by violence over the years. In 2008, some 200 people invaded the mine, setting some of its equipment on fire. There have also been accusations of human rights abuses and in 2013 the company compensated 14 local women who were 26 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

sexually assaulted by security person– C. Keating nel and police.

Expert panel begins review of Canada’s environmental assessment processes A panel of industry, environmental and indigenous rights experts formed to review Canada’s environmental assessment processes began its threemonth consultation period in midSeptember, fulfilling a campaign promise the federal Liberals made in the 2015 election. Environment Minister Catherine McKenna announced in mid-August that the panel would consist of Doug Horswill, retired senior vice-president of sustainability and external affairs at Teck Resources and the former deputy minister of mines for British Columbia; Renée Pelletier, managing partner at Olthuis, Kleer, Townshend LLP who

specializes in aboriginal and treaty rights; Rod Northey, a member of Gowling WLG’s Environmental Law Group; and Johanne Gélinas, Canada’s former commissioner of environment and sustainable development. During the campaign the Liberals promised to review both the 2012 Environmental Assessment Act and the National Energy Board (NEB), saying they wanted to make sure Canadians are “able to trust the government will engage in appropriate regulatory oversight, including credible environmental assessments.” The Act, introduced in an omnibus bill, eased environmental assessment rules, reduced the scope and number of required assessments for projects, and allowed some federal departments – including the NEB – to issue project licenses and permits without a completed assessment. The panel is hosting in-person events to engage with industry stakeholders, indigenous groups and the

Rock bottom Women hold 12 per cent of board seats in publicly-listed Canadian companies, just a one per cent increase from last year, according to a report published by the Canadian Securities Administrators on Sept. 28. The mining industry, which made up 26 per cent of the surveyed companies, has the highest percentage of boards devoid of female directors – a number that actually increased from last year – and is one of the sectors with the lowest number of companies with women in senior executive positions. Ontario Securities Commission CEO Maureen Jensen urged companies at the Toronto Board of Trade on Sept. 27 to make gender diversity a priority when appointing board members and senior executive roles. Jensen noted 85 per cent of 521 board seats vacancies were filled by men last year. The report looked at “comply-orexplain” disclosures from 677 listed companies. The disclosures detail each company’s approach to adding women to boards and senior executive positions. The measure was introduced by regulators in most provinces, excluding Alberta, Prince Edward Island, and British Columbia, in late 2014 to improve female representation in senior roles in publicly-traded companies. – C. Keating

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developments general public in 21 different locations Canada between midacross September and mid-December. It will also accept written submissions and hold online engagement sessions. The panellists will produce a report on their findings for the minister in January, which will include recommendations on amending the current environmental review system to ensure decisions serve the public’s best interest. Another key focus is to ensure the new system provides better consulta-

tion and engagement options for Canadians, and specifically for indigenous groups. The current Act reduced public input on projects when it was implemented. The Mining Association of Canada (MAC) is currently helping members prepare to meet with the panel. It wants the Act amended to allow the federal regulatory system to coordinate better with provincial environmental assessments. “The 2012 Act is far worse than its predecessor in terms of

harmonising with the provinces,” said CEO Pierre Gratton, “which adds more time and resources, is more onerous for proponents, and more confusing for the public.” He said he hopes the review will yield a new system that finds “better ways to identify the cumulative effects of different projects in a region.” Environmentalists have also welcomed the review, looking for better safeguards for the environment and – C. Keating ecosystems.

The genesis of a disaster Structural flaws led to Samarco dam failure: report By Eavan Moore

A technical investigation released in late August blamed structural flaws for the collapse of a Brazilian iron ore tailings impoundment operated by Samarco Mineração S.A., a joint venture of BHP Billiton and Vale. On Nov. 5, 2015, the Fundão impoundment’s dams failed and released a flood of tailings, killing 19 people, destroying the village of Bento Rodrigues, and polluting the Rio Doce basin. Samarco and its parent companies commissioned Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP to investigate the immediate cause of the failure with the help of a four-person expert panel: Norbert R. Morgenstern, Steven G. Vick, Cássio B. Viotti, and Bryan D. Watts, all geotechnical engineers who specialize in dams. Morgenstern and Vick were both on the independent panel that examined the cause of the Mount Polley failure. The final report traces the collapse back to deviations from the original design concept, which used unsaturated sand tailings to support weaker slimes tailings and relied upon a minimum 200-metre separation between sand deposition and slimes. Samarco engineers started to discover construction defects in drainage structures not long after the impoundment was put into use in 2009. The drain design cre-

ated to replace it allowed saturation to continue to develop in the sand tailings. When the dam designated for sands was set back from its original alignment to accommodate repairs downstream, the 200-metre separation was not preserved. The proximity of the slimes further served to inhibit drainage in the sands. The dam’s growing height bore down on the slimes-rich zone. “As the softer slimes were loaded, they compressed,” wrote the investigators. “At the same time, they also deformed laterally, squeezing out…in a process known as lateral extrusion. The sands immediately above, forced to conform to this movement, experienced a reduction in the horizontal stress that confined them. This allowed the sands to, in effect, be pulled apart and in the process become looser.” The loose, saturated sands ultimately liquefied, causing the flowslide that destroyed the dam. Computational and lab modelling by the investigators predicted that the point at which that would occur roughly coincided with the dam’s height at the actual time of collapse. They concluded that a series of earthquakes just before the failure likely accelerated a process already underway. The panel was not tasked with finding fault or evaluating the downstream effects of the spill.

BHP Billiton spokesperson Bronwyn Wilkinson said in an email that the company was studying the report. BHP Billiton has separately used Canadian Dam Association (CDA) guidelines to review the 10 highest priority dams at its operations and has already started making unspecified improvements. The CDA guidelines are themselves undergoing an update – which Wilkinson said BHP was following closely – but represent a global standard for evaluating dam safety. Previously BHP’s dams were held only to the applicable national standards. “Moving forward, we will further enhance oversight by creating a centralized dam management function that can bring additional specialist expertise inhouse,” Wilkinson said. BHP will also increase the use of independent reviews, create a global dam standard for its own operations and work to implement its improved dam management system at non-operated joint ventures. At Samarco, operations remain suspended indefinitely. “A range of regulatory and judicial approvals are necessary for restart to occur and this will not occur in this calendar year,” said Wilkinson. She added that to be viable after the loss of the Fundão impoundment, Samarco would have to reduce the size of its workforce, restructure its debt and reduce its costs. CIM November • Novembre 2016 | 27

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The road to autonomy By François Gariépy

utonomy has become a popular buzzword in the mining industry over recent years, with companies touting the benefits of selfdirected machines. But the industry needs to carefully consider how such technologies are implemented and whether autonomy in itself is the ultimate goal, as they have major implications for the potential benefits and employee acceptance. By definition, autonomy is the ability to act without external decisions, guidance or influence. Machine autonomy is achieved when a machine operates on its own, without any kind of control or monitoring. Related though slightly different is automation, which enables machines to complete actions without direct human control. Autonomy is the point at which automated machines can make all the decisions and execute all the actions inherent to its operation. Many benefits are commonly attributed to the operation of autonomous mining machines: improved safety, increased availability, reduced variability, reduced component wear, improved productivity, et cetera. Often though, reduced labor requirements is the first benefit that comes to a mine operator’s mind when discussing automation. However, this should not even make it on the list of objectives. Obviously, maintaining the workforce means not making machines autonomous. The benefits enumerated above, however, are not inherent to the autonomy of the machines. Rather, they result from the machines’ automation. And though the other benefits are often only afterthoughts, they are just as real, tangible, significant and measurable.

Removing operators, and thus reducing the salary mass, indisputably has a major positive financial potential. But with that comes all the major costs and risks associated with automation, such as lack of accountability and facing regulatory voids. The fact is that for most processes, automating them is relatively easy and inexpensive. Making them safe is normally not complex either. What makes automation expensive is ensuring that the systems implemented are guaranteed to be safer than manned operations in all possible circumstances. It is insufficient to make autonomous machines safer than manned machines on average. There is an expectation that autonomous machines must be safer, or at least as safe, in all possible individual situations that exist. Therefore, it is best to leave operators in control of automated machines (i.e. not making them autonomous). This enables operations to gain the benefits of automation, while leaving on employees the responsibility to react to abnormal situations when necessary. Both the benefits and the costs increase as the level of automation increases toward autonomy. Yet they do not increase at the same rate. Benefits grow faster at the beginning, when you start collecting the low-hanging fruits; but become less significant as the major gains are realized. Similarly, successive improvements typically become more onerous as the cheaper ones get implemented. The problem is that it is not clear what the right level of automation is for a given operation until it is implemented. Yet two things are sure: 1) Not automating guarantees not getting any of the benefits automation can provide, Send comments to editor@cim.org

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and 2) The more an operation automates, the higher the probability that it will hit the point of diminishing return (i.e. the level of automation where the incremental costs outweigh the incremental benefits). For most existing sites, the benefits of autonomy are not worth the investment. That does not mean one should not automate existing operations, but the change management challenge that represents the transition to autonomy is a major impediment. Change management is too often overlooked and if not addressed properly, it will fail one’s automation effort. Mine operations will be reluctant to replace seasoned operators with computers and electronic sensors, and automation technology trials will often yield poor results due to people voluntarily failing the prototypes, pushing them outside their operational range. The industry should not start with the principle that no operator will be in charge of tomorrow’s mining machines. It might be the case, but we should progressively make machines more automated and let machine autonomy become a natural evolution as machines become able to handle longer periods of autonomy. Savings related to labor force reduction will materialize on their own as automation allows operators to do additional tasks or operate more machines at one time. Progressive implementation provides the double benefit of diminishing the change management challenge and minimizing any eventual investments beyond the point of diminishing return. CIM Francois Gariepy has extensive experience engineering software for mining applications. He is currently the director of the technology solutions for Peck Teck Consulting Ltd.

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THE CELEBRATION AND RECOGNITION OF EXCELLENCE WITHIN THE MINING AND MINERALS INDUSTRY IS A TRADITION OF WHICH CIM IS VERY PROUD. Every year CIM is privileged to award more than 20 awards to highlight an individual’s or a company’s accomplishments and outstanding contributions. Their achievements are a tribute to our community and their legacy as industry icons inspires tomorrow’s leaders.

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Retain employees through wellmanaged maternity and parental leave Kim Allen

omen make up just 12.8 per cent of licensed engineers across Canada, even though 19 per cent of the engineering degrees in Canada are awarded to women. We need to do more to encourage women to enter and, as importantly, remain in the profession. One area that is crucial to retaining skilled and valued talent is improving career transitions, especially when it comes to managing leaves of absence. A poorly managed transition, frequently experienced by women who traditionally take leave when they have children, is a contributing factor in attrition within the profession. To this end, in early 2016 Engineers Canada and Geoscientists Canada jointly published Managing Transitions: Before, During and After Leave, a planning resource guide for employers and employees to better plan for and manage maternity and parental leaves in the engineering and geoscience professions.

The benefits of actively managing transitions Experience has shown that without forethought, re-joining an organization or re-entering the workforce after a leave of absence can be frustrating, especially when expectations are not managed. The simple solution is to proactively manage the transition beyond the minimum requirements of the law, something that many employers are not yet doing. Knowing what to expect and building a positive, welcoming business culture will entice valued and talented employees to return, whether they be male or female. This benefits both the employee and the employer; leaves of absence will not disrupt career progres-

sion, productivity, project deadlines or employee development. Well-managed transitions reduce factors that contribute to under-representation and a lack of diversity in the workplace, and business continuity remains. There are many opportunities for an employer to build a symbiotic relationship with an employee when it comes to leaves of absence. For example, has the leave been communicated to the wider organization as the employee prefers? Once on leave, is the employee kept in the loop on significant departmental meetings, trainings and social gatherings? Does the employee feel welcome (not pressured) to attend? These considerations can go a long way in helping the employee feel he or she is valued, still a member of the team, and most importantly, remain successful professionally while going through a major personal change. These opportunities exist throughout all stages of the transition process, starting with planning for leave, during the leave period, when the employee is getting ready to return to work, and in the first six months after return.

Promising practices that encourage retention of professionals There are also a number of promising practices that foster a culture of retention. For instance, a designated period of flexible hours for an employee’s return is recommended. This may include work-from-home, reduced hours and other arrangements that allow for a friendly and successful re-entry. Flexibility can act as an adjustment period to help the returnee manage unforeseen challenges such as increased family responsibilities. Send comments to editor@cim.org

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I encourage companies to be forward-thinking and pro-active in their leave policies. While some companies will institute baseline policies that require minimal involvement in supporting employees’ transitions and which only just meet legal requirements, those companies that go above and beyond these minimal standards are those that will see the greatest return on their investment in the form of enhanced employee retention and a better workplace culture. Re-integrating experienced employees is less expensive than recruiting, onboarding and training new employees. The average cost of replacing employees is about 40 per cent of the annual salary for entry-level employees, 150 per cent for mid-level employees and up to 400 per cent for specialized, high-level employees. But policies alone will not make a colleague’s transition a success. It is people that bring policies to life. And it is not sufficient for only the employee going on leave, their supervisor and the human resources professional to be aware of these principles. Having all staff – from top executives through to junior employees – aware of the principles like those in Managing Transitions helps ensure that all in an organization are supportive of the staff member going on leave. CIM For the complete Managing Transitions guide and other resources, visit the Engineers Canada website. Kim Allen, MBA, FCAE, FEC, P.Eng., is CEO of Engineers Canada and this article was written with contributions from Engineers Canada staff members Jeanette M. Southwood, M.A.Sc., FCAE, FEC, P.Eng., and Julia Chehaiber, MEBT. Engineers Canada would like to thank APEGA’s Women in APEGA group, who created the foundational document upon which Managing Transitions is based.

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Courtesy of Finning (Canada)

To deliver fully assembled Cat 797s to their oil sands clients, Mammoet and Finning had to figure out solutions to two nagging problems: how to load the massive haul trucks onto a trailer bed and manage its weight in transit.

Keeping it together Mammoet and Finning deliver fully assembled haul trucks in the oil sands By Eavan Moore

lberta oil sands operations rely on the largest haul trucks on the market. When these trucks need to be transported, they usually have to be partly disassembled and transferred in multiple loads. But the Finning Cat dealership in Fort McKay and its transportation partner Mammoet have been successfully hauling fully assembled Cat 797s between the Finning Fort McKay shop and several oil sands mines since October 2015. In doing so, they have saved mining customers several days of downtime per shipment. “It came from a conversation about how we could provide better service for the customer,” said Kellie Brannan, project manager at Finning. “Previously we had to disassemble a truck after we’d just rebuilt it to transport it back to site. We wanted to give it back to the customer and have it go to work [immediately] instead of having them wait while it was assembled again on site.” Typically, a Caterpillar 797 is shipped in three separate loads. The dump body of the truck is lifted off with cranes, two rear tires are removed, and the remainder of the truck makes up the third load. That removal and reassembly can take several days on each end and involve the labour of crane operators and mechanics. To the staff at Finning and Mammoet, it also seemed perverse. “We would have a working truck being assembled in a shop somewhere,” said Niek De Winter, account manager at Mam-

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moet. “It has to be transported somewhere else. And you have to take the perfectly working truck apart, which takes two days. Then you have to transfer it in three loads. And then you have to put it back together.” The idea of hauling whole trucks had arisen in the past, but it presented two difficulties: at about 300 tonnes, the Cat 797 is too heavy to legally haul on a single trailer, and it is also too heavy to load onto the trailer using normal methods. Mammoet had to come up with workarounds for both problems. To address the trailer weight, Mammoet took two standard trailers, put them side-by-side, and bolted them together. “By doing that, you spread your weight over way more axles, and therefore your allowable weight goes up,” said De Winter. The second problem required more ingenuity. To load a smaller truck, transporters would normally build a ramp and drive it onto the trailer. Other equipment can be lifted with a crane. “But a truck of this size, it’s too big to use a ramp,” said De Winter. “It’s too big to load it on with cranes. So people were just unable to load it.” Mammoet invented a lifting platform: a large steel plate fitted with hydraulic jacks. “We drive [the truck] onto this plate, then this whole plate lifts itself up using the lifting devices,” explained De Winter. “And after it’s been lifted to a certain height, we can drive our trailer underneath and then the steel plate lowers itself back onto the trailer, and then it is loaded.”

logistics The entire solution involved more than just engineering know-how: it took buy-in from many people and organizations. This idea was already under discussion between the two companies when De Winter joined Mammoet in the region three years ago, but the first fully assembled truck did not ship until October 2015. “The thing is, it’s not just us coming up with a solution,” said De Winter. “You have to make sure you talk to Alberta Infrastructure and Alberta Transportation, making sure that you have the right permits to do this. Then you have to have the mine owners who want to go ahead.” De Winter’s role was to show customers that the solution’s benefits outweighed its significant costs. Such elaborate moves drive up costs. With the new solution, four pilot cars, four tractor units and a crew of at least 10 people have to accompany one delivery. The three separate loads used earlier might require a similar total number of people, but not all at once. But Finning’s oil sands clients ultimately agreed that shaving off assembly time would be worth it. Moving the trucks fully assembled is now a standard approach for the MammoetFinning partnership. Multiple trucks have been delivered this way; for each move, Brannan estimated that the mine saves five to seven days of downtime. A typical delivery from Finning to site would have taken two days to disassemble, then five to reassemble and inspect. Now, the mine can do its incoming inspection in a day, then send the truck out to work. “Our mining customers have been very happy with the service,” said Brannan. She said the implementation had gone surprisingly smoothly, with no trouble on Finning’s end. There is one logistical downside to moving an extra-wide load: scheduling becomes more challenging. The steel lifting frame, the widest part of the shipment, runs 32 feet across.

Because it takes up the entire road, Mammoet’s permits are limited to relatively untrafficked times of day. Finding the right schedule is a matter of working with Alberta Transportation and with multiple departments at the mine. “You have to make sure that the mining guys are involved, and you also have to have their infrastructure group and maybe talk to their scheduling group so that you know when you can travel,” said De Winter. Working around rush-hour traffic and the mine’s schedule means a delivery to a location only an hour’s drive away can take two full days. “Sometimes we load it in the morning, and then we transfer it at night to get to the mine site, but by the time we are offloaded it’s already early in the morning and we cannot travel back,” explained De Winter, “so then we have to wait the entire day until the next night to travel back to base.” There are also some locations that the fully assembled truck shipment simply cannot reach. The allowable weight on the Peter Lougheed Bridge across the Athabasca River prevents large deliveries to more southerly sites. “We are currently working with Alberta Transportation, the mine owners, Finning and our in-house engineering group to find a solution,” said De Winter. The two companies have neighbouring offices in Fort McKay, where oil sands operations are within close reach and almost every road has already seen wide, heavy loads of this kind. While other manufacturers produce 362-tonne capacity haulers, only the transport of Cat 797s has been done up to this point. “We really committed to Finning to transport their trucks,” said De Winter. “Never to be said that we won’t be doing this with someone else, but there’s nothing in the making. For now we’re just focused on Finning and what we can do for them.” CIM

Book a CIM Distinguished Lecturer today.

HanI HeneIn

DanIeL MarsHaLL

Professor at the Department of Chemicals & Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, AB

Professor of Economic Geology and Geochemistry Earth Sciences Department, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC

LawrenCe Devon sMItH

PatrICk stePHenson

Principal consultant at Lawrence, Devon, Smith and Associates

Director / Principal Geologist, AMC Mining Consultants (Canada) Ltd.

DIrk van ZyL Professor, Chair of Mining and the Environment, University of British Columbia

www.cim.org/en/Services/Distinguished-Lecturers | Dist_lecturer@cim.org | 514.939.2710 ext: 1332 November • Novembre 2016 | 33

Courtesy of Vale

Cost and safety concerns inspired a closer look at how waste moved through the Stobie mine site.

The solution of a sort Vale’s Stobie Mine finds success with underground waste-management system By Kate Sheridan

lipping a dumpster is a hassle. Without a speciallydesigned bin and attachment, an operator must get out of the loader to secure and then detach the bin. Luckily operators at Vale’s Stobie mine have never been injured this way. But still, the hazards made mine management uneasy. At the same time, the waste in the underground bins was co-mingled. The bins contained a wide variety of refuse in them: household and industrial wastes as well as recyclable materials. While that made it easy for miners underground to dump their trash, the local landfill operator was charging Vale to sort it out. Vale decided to try to kill two birds with four bins. To protect employees from potential injury and to reduce the amount of sorting at the landfill, the mine implemented a new waste management system at its underground operation – one that is similar to what already happens in kitchens and garages across the country. In 2014, Vale implemented a colour-coded bin system for different types of waste; instead of dumping everything into one bin, workers now sort out recycling, domestic waste, scrap metal and industrial waste at waste stations underground. “It’s just keeping up with the times, so to speak,” said Gary Remington, Vale’s environment superintendent. “We’re in

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2016 now. As everyday citizens, we’re all practicing these things at home, right?”

Bin there, done that Even before implementing the waste stations, Vale had a waste management system implemented above ground. “We’ve had a colour-coded bin system in place now for, oh, probably 20 years at least,” Remington said. But space and logistics issues in the underground environment meant Vale had not really considered switching up its waste management strategy. And, Remington noted, it was not a priority. “From a logistics perspective, the whole idea of organizing waste when you’re trying to do mining and all the things that you do underground – it can kind of take a back seat.” The system is based on what was already happening with the old bins, said logistics supervisor Thomas Holmberg. “We already had a couple of main locations that were our transporting spots when we’re moving supplies underground at some of our main levels in the mine,” he said. “And we also looked at some of the areas where the waste is generated from, like the local garages underground.” Four levels of the mine have strategically located waste stations where garages and other areas can bring their mate-

logistics rials. “From there, when the bin gets full, it’s taken from that waste station and brought to the cage and sent up,” Remington said. The new bins are much smaller than the older ones – about 36 cubic feet instead of 240 cubic feet – but a larger number of smaller bins can fit better in tight underground spaces. (Vale’s local landfill operator, Day Construction, provided the bins.) “We do have different sized bins – we have smaller bins in areas with limited space and that generate less waste, and larger bins in areas where there is a significant amount of waste generated,” Holmberg said. The bins are emptied above-ground every day, Remington said, transported through the mine on forklift to the cage, then brought up to surface. The industrial waste and steel material is dumped into larger designated bins on surface and the smaller domestic and recycling material is placed in a designated area then dumped for disposal off site. The forklift is equipped with a rotator attachment, allowing an operator to turn the bins and dump them out into a larger bin without getting out of the cab – thus eliminating the potential for a twisted ankle or a tweaked knee. To ensure employees use the system appropriately, the program includes a training and auditing process. Remington’s team goes out to each waste site at Stobie – above- and below-ground – every quarter and checks the above-ground bins for cross-contamination, he explained. If they notice a problem, they try to find the underlying cause. “It goes back to just providing that education and trying to understand if there is a problem with these bins,” he said. “Are the bins not getting back underground quickly enough so we’re using recycling bins for domestic or vice versa? Maybe there’s a logistics project there to sort out.”

“It also helps organize things better underground,” Remington said. “Everything is sort of in its spot.”

Moving ahead The system is not perfect. Some cross-contamination due to human error is almost guaranteed, Remington said. “I’m not naive. We’re not going to eliminate [it] 100 per cent. But I would say based on the feedback that we get from our landfill operators that the amount of cross-contamination coming from the bins at Stobie has certainly improved greatly over that time.” The upfront cash costs of implementing this program were not insignificant, and every dollar counts during a downturn. “I think it’s certainly a feather in the cap of the Stobie employees. They can say that they’ve tackled this problem and succeeded.” Remington and his team visited the site in September, and the program is still going strong. “There are always going to be hiccups, but all in all we’re seeing the benefits of it.” CIM

Repair or re-envision? When Vale first decided to implement the program, the company was facing a $100,000 repair bill for the old bins. (As operators dumped the bins out at the surface, the bins often took a beating.) But repairing the bins would not have eliminated the risk of injury to operators, explained Remington. The second option – the new bins and system – was cheaper. “We did have to purchase more bins because they’re a smaller size,” Remington said, and the company needed to buy the rotator attachment for the forklift. According to Remington, the total cost was around $60,000. In addition to a lower one-time expense, the company is also saving money each month on the cost of segregating materials at the landfill. “It’s hard to understand totally what Stobie’s [individual] contribution was because we get a total cost of segregating at the landfill and that includes segregating for all the sites,” Remington said. November • Novembre 2016 | 35

Courtesy of NanoSteel

Greater value than the sum of its parts The potential of additive manufacturing in mining By Tom DiNardo

etting equipment to a mine site, whether it be a 400-ton haul truck or a replacement tire, can be difficult to manage given remote locations and poor road access or harsh environmental conditions. Additive manufacturing, commonly referred to as 3D printing, offers mine operators the ability to create certain pieces of equipment they need onsite, which reduces costs and limits logistical headaches. According to the definition set forward by the International Organization for Standardization, additive manufacturing is the “process of joining materials to make parts from 3D model data, usually layer upon layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing and formative manufacturing methodologies.” Today the main application of additive manufacturing is for small repair parts. But Harald Lemke, general manager of engineered powders at NanoSteel, says this is only the first step. Lemke foresees a future where miners will be able to redesign and print new equipment onsite in reaction to the changing conditions of a mine throughout its life.

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CIM: Tell me about NanoSteel and what you do there. Lemke: At NanoSteel, much of our focus as a business is on the development of high-strength sheet steel for automotive lightweighting. Separate and distinct from sheet steel is the initiative that I lead which is powder-based alloy development [that is 3D printable]. CIM: Can you explain what engineered powders are? Lemke: Think about examples of stainless steel, like a spoon or some other piece of kitchenware. These items are often made with sheet materials, which are stamped or formed to generate the pieces. If the forms are complex or materials are used that cannot be stamped or casted, then you use powders. And powders are like little particles which can be 20, 50 or 200 microns. You take these particles and arrange them via processes such as additive manufacturing to make the parts you want. The powder is “engineered” when we design the

logistics alloy to deliver performance properties such as hardness or ductility that are required for a specific application. CIM: What is the value of additive manufacturing in mining today? Lemke: Additive manufacturing has several value propositions such as the potential to shorten lead times and manufacture highly complex parts. However, additive manufacturing is still in general more expensive than traditional subtractive manufacturing, in particular when larger part sizes need to be manufactured. Since most parts in mining are of larger and simpler geometries, nearly all OEM mining parts are currently manufactured via traditional subtractive manufacturing, such as casting with subsequent machining or other post-production processes. However, AM’s supply chain benefits can provide a decisive benefit. For example, a replacement part can be cost effective even if it takes one day to be printed with the powder bed fusion technology if the part is needed at a remote location where high downtimes are experienced. The most common AM application in mining — used primarily for repair applications — is another AM technology, namely laser deposition technology, due to its higher deposition rate. But overall, additive manufacturing can help to provide shorter lead times, lower inventory and transportation costs, and on-demand parts. CIM: Tell me more about using additive manufacturing for repair parts on site. Lemke: Today you can save 80 or 90 per cent of the original piece and just add a little bit on the contours to finish it up. This is the first step. But it’s insignificant compared to what the real potential is. I’m talking about making new forms, not only repairing a form that has already been [constructed]. At the end of the day, the transformative nature of this technology is not there yet because a designer-driven manufacturing paradigm and process flow is still in its infancy. This is because only a few materials are available that can be printed reliably. Printing machines are still slow and expensive, and post-processing is still sub-optimal. For printing machines to be effective it is estimated that the machines need to be 10 to 20 times faster than today and it might take another five to seven years until such rapid and reliable production techniques are commercially available. CIM: Can you give me some examples of what can be designed today using additive manufacturing? Lemke: Currently, market innovators design and manufacture prototypes and a few parts such as novel pumps, impellers, filters, screens and heat exchangers. Heat exchangers benefit from additive manufacturing in particular when they feature less pressure drop and thereby lower energy consumption. All of these parts can be [created] on site if you have a printer and appropriate post-processing capabilities, assuming that you find a material that meets your performance requirement. Another example is if you have a stop in production, you can print the part right beside your facility. So the

supply chain strategies are very important and you find that sometimes you can make short-term fixes for production with additive manufacturing and then later on if you want to have a certified part, you could fly that in. CIM: What are the benefits of additive manufacturing from a logistics point of view? Lemke: The breadth of logistic benefits increases when several parts can be redesigned to make one part, or if you can print a part that provides not only mechanical benefits but also improves heat transfer rates by printing complex cooling channels. You can also precisely calibrate part characteristics mechanically, thermally and electronically. And then once you have [the 3D model], you have a model history and now any change you make can be implemented more quickly and uniformly across an organization by changing the 3D model rather than each drawing. For example, your models might be developed in corporate engineering but the local applicator in Ohio, Alaska, or Saudi Arabia will customize it to his local needs. And with that decentralization, you don’t need to move 20 tonnes of steel with a helicopter, you just print it on site. Delocalized manufacturing is a significant advantage of additive manufacturing. You also don’t need so much decentralized inventory; you print it when it is required on site. CIM: Does additive manufacturing make sense for all types of mining operations, no matter the location? Lemke: The supply benefit is of course at remote locations, or in countries with political stability issues. But the location is just one driver. Another driver is innovation around process approach that can increase return on investment. For example, in high-value streams like gold, diamond, copper and nickel mining, when you can change the percentage of extraction of a mineral by one per cent – and you can do that often by proper mixing, heat control and process routing – you make tens of millions of dollars by timely optimising hardware to the current and local asset stream environment. That is where you have the benefit. You can redesign mission-critical process steps that are value adding according to local, spatio-temporal environments. The mine changes, the composition changes, the minerals change. And you now have a manufacturing process that can immediately adapt and maximize the profit of an entire plant operation. But that requires visibility and adoption with regards to acceptance of these tools and a designer-oriented process flow thinking with localized monitoring. CIM: What needs to happen for the adoption to occur? Lemke: [Mining needs to move] away from asset thinking to profit-driven processes across disciplines, functions and silos. It’s an organizational question. The need, in my opinion, will be for supply chain managers that can integrate these new disciplines and technologies like additive manufacturing into daily operations. CIM November • Novembre 2016 | 37

Floating new ideas Buoyed by pressure to cut costs and improve recovery, new flotation technologies are on the rise. by Eavan Moore

s design criteria go, removing the froth layer from froth flotation makes a bold statement. The fact that such a device not only exists, but has 50 operating installations, attests to the pressure on industry to find new solutions in the face of modern challenges. Low grades, complex ores and rising energy costs have prompted the development of entirely new flotation vessels, improvements to existing technology, and new thinking about flotation flowsheets. The froth-free flotation vessel comes by way of Eriez Flotation Division, which patented it in 2002 and marketed it under the name HydroFloat. It is intended specifically for an innovative flowsheet that addresses one of the biggest problems mining operations face: With more tonnages to process, and more fine-grained ore, comminution is demanding ever more energy. If flotation circuits could handle coarser particles, then energy could be saved in the comminution circuit. “Most mining companies are dealing with declining ore grades and complex mineralogy,” said Barun Gorain, director of Barrick Gold’s Strategic Technology Solutions Group. “The real problem is that more than 99 per cent of what we actually mine in the gold industry is considered waste.” He said that coarse particle flotation could allow mines to reject some waste earlier in the value chain, which will help reduce capital and operating costs. 38 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

Unfortunately, the conventional flotation cell achieves high recovery only in limited size ranges. For example, a sulfide ore might float very well at 90 to 120 microns, but not at 50 or 150 microns. The research to date has identified two main reasons for the upper limit on floatable particle sizes. First, coarser particles tend not to have as much surface mineralization to attract bubbles. Second, even if they are able to attach, they tend to detach again. In most conventional tank designs, an impeller at the bottom creates turbulence that helps bubbles and particles collide; the bubbles rise up through a quiescent zone and congregate in a froth layer at the top. Graeme Jameson, laureate professor at the University of Newcastle in Australia, explained that if particles are hanging on to bubbles spinning around in liquid vortices at 100 revolutions a second, there is some critical size at which a particle will simply detach from the bubble. High-energy turbulence is great for small-particle recovery, and by design the existence of turbulence is what keeps particles of all sizes in suspension. But that turbulence also discourages coarse particles from floating. “The coarser the particles you’ve got, the faster you’ve got to stir the liquid to keep them off the bottom of the vessel,” he said. “So it’s a self-defeating piece of equipment from the point of view of trying to float coarse particles.”

Courtesy of Woodgrove Technologies

Woodgrove Technologiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; staged flotation reactor (SFR) divides the flotation process into three chambers

Build it bigger – but smarter

Instead of an impeller, Eriez’s HydroFloat uses a fluidized bed to lift up coarse ore particles. Fed from the top, the vessel has a water inlet about two-thirds of the way down. As coarse particles sink to the bottom, the constant flow of water gently pushes them back up, continuously disrupting a region that is about 65 per cent solids. The water has been treated with compressed gas and a frothing additive to generate bubbles the coarse particles can attach to. While mineralized particles float into the overflow launder, coarse gangue settles to a dewatering zone in the bottom third of the vessel. When that zone reaches a certain density, its contents are released into the underflow outlet. Ken Roberts, global sales director at Eriez, said that HydroFloat can extend flotation up to 400 or more microns. In some sulfide ores, it has recovered two-millimetre particles – translating to 2,000 microns. Moreover, he said, “We’ve proven with research with the University of Utah that we can float a particle with two per cent surface mineralization showing.” HydroFloat is explicitly not intended to float fine particles. The idea is that it would be part of a split circuit, presorted into coarse and fine, with technologies tailored to each. The practice has been proven in non-metal ores like potash and diamonds; Eriez has just been broken into the metals market in the last couple of years. Jameson has been doing lab work on his own fluidized-bed solution since 2006. His design adapts the eponymous Jameson Cell he patented in the late 1980s. In contrast to the HydroFloat, his cell treats fine and coarse together. The flotation feed cycles past an airjet first, where it encounters the high energy useful for attaching fine particles to bubbles. “That’s like the Jameson Cell, actually,” he said. Then it flows into a fluidized bed, where the lower-energy environment allows coarse particles to attach. The ore-laden bubbles float up to a froth layer and overflow into a launder. A recycle line takes liquid off the top and recycles it into the base to be used for fluidization. Any fine particles washed out in the recycle line get another go at attaching to a bubble near the base. Fine gangue tends toward an overflow outlet. A year ago, Jameson got his hands on a porphyry copper ore from South America, and his recently completed test work shows encouraging results. “We can get 100 per cent recovery up to about 300 microns,” he said. Now Jameson is looking for a mine site willing to trial a full-scale installation of about 50 to 100 tonnes per hour. “The point of that size is that the single unit is reasonably easy to handle and to build,” he said. “You can take it to a site on a truck and install it there and do your testwork, and then you’ve got something you can reliably scale up from.”

Although proven technology supports floating coarse ore, that is nowhere near the norm. “The mining industry has a history of addressing dropping feed grades and higher costs by leveraging economies of scale,” said Walter Valery, global director of consulting and technology for mining and mineral processing at Hatch. The tendency is to “treat large tonnages, grind all the material finely and let the downstream separation processes sort it all out. However, this is generally very inefficient and is neither responsible nor viable during downtimes.” Major equipment suppliers meet that demand by designing ever-bigger flotation cells. Thirty years ago, a cell 30 cubic metres in volume would have been unusually large. Now, 300cubic-metre cells are commonplace. Outotec has a 500-cubicmetre cell in operation and several 630-cubic-metre cells in delivery, while FLSmidth has one 660cubic-metre cell in operation. Building one big tank does provide energy economies of scale. That shines especially bright for mining companies newly interested in the energy cost of flotation – previously a major theme only in comminution, but now entering focus as cost pressures generally intensify and flotation tonnages rise. “When we double the size [of a tank], we get down by at least 10 to 20 per cent energy in practice,” said Antti Rinne, vice-president of beneficiation sales at Outotec. “That’s a huge amount of money in most countries in the world at the moment.” That gradual scale-up Eriez’s HydroFloat can float comes with downsides. If the particles up to 2,000 microns. While the technology is familiar at volume of the tank increases, potash operations, its installation at the turbulence will not necesmetal mines is a recent development. sarily reach a commensurate height, which makes at least some of the extra tank volume a waste of space, steel and money. “The proportion of the cell that is highly turbulent has decreased significantly as the size of flotation cells has dramatically increased over the last 20 years,” said Erico Tabosa, minerals processing engineer at Hatch. FLSmidth has addressed this problem through its new nextSTEP impeller design, which was developed to eliminate “dead” spaces without turbulence. As a result, the new design also makes the machine more energy efficient. “We found that we are consistently lower in power when compared to other forced-air flotation machines,” said Asa Weber, flotation technology director at FLSmidth. FLSmidth’s other major innovation is its Hybrid Energy circuit configuration, which addresses a problem of inconsistency in float cells. Because some ore is being recovered in

Courtesy of Eriez

Fluidized beds

40 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

Separate chambers

Combining solutions

November • Novembre 2016 | 41

Courtesy of Woodgrove Technologies

each cell of a circuit, the mineralogical characteristics are changing from cell to cell but the cell design itself is not. Outotec also developed ways to scale up while maintaining energy efficiency. Its own novel impeller designs, introduced in 2007, include a rotor/stator with similar turbulence-distributing benefits, called FloatForce. Outotec also invented an auxiliary impeller, called FlowBooster, that further improves mixing in the tank with very low additional energy. Significant effort has gone into finding the best impeller speed for the specific ore and application. “We’ve been doing a lot of work in recent years looking at variable speed drives on flotation cells,” said Ben Murphy, technology director of flotation at Outotec. The first large cells running operations with a To float the same amount of material, the SFR requires less power and a smaller plant footprint than a conventional flotation cell. variable speed drive were installed about five years ago. Since then Kosick said the SFR’s efficient design cuts its energy use such installations have shown they can maximize energy use, almost in half compared to a conventional flotation cell, and recovery or sometimes even both. its limited use of floorspace makes it cheaper to install. “We’ve “The interesting thing is we’ve actually been able to drill been selling it on the reduction in capital and operating costs,” down a lot of the speed optimization and the energy reduction he said. But its design also promotes better selectivity due to work to small cells,” added Murphy. “Which is kind of neat; the large reductions of air used in these machines when comit doesn’t always work that way.” For a small operation relying pared to tank cells. on diesel generators in a remote location, that could save real “The data we’re getting back at full scale is showing us that money. we can float coarser material by constraining surface area, which results in very stable froths and short transport distances,” said Kosick. The coarsest cell operating now is runBarrick uses large conventional cells at its operations. But ning at a feed p80 of about 230 microns; the finest one is at it is also working with different consortiums to develop “the 20 microns. next generation” of more efficient flotation machines, accordTwenty-two SFRs have entered operation since 2010; more ing to Gorain. “Economies of scale still works for some ores, than 130 are under design. After a few successful installations but for low grade complex ore bodies, these conventional cells at small mines, the consortium funded a trial scale-up to 930 are approaching their technical limits or their benefits are only tonnes per hour at Vale’s Sossego copper mine in Brazil. One marginal at best,” he said. of the consortium companies recently awarded Woodgrove The consortium sponsored work on a new design by the detailed engineering for an installation at a 95,000 tonneWoodgrove Technologies. Instead of separate zones in one per-day copper project in Chile. vessel, the staged flotation reactor (SFR) divides the flotation process into three chambers: a turbulent particle collection unit, a quiescent bubble disengagement unit, and a similarly quiescent froth recovery unit. Every SFR is custom-built for These new solutions are often presented, and can be each mine’s projected ore characteristics. installed, as discrete projects. But they are most effective “We look at the grade and tonnage over the life of the mine, when seen holistically. For example, Woodgrove recently and then we design the froth recovery unit to manage the merged with the process control supplier Portage Technoloweighted distribution of metal units over this time,” said gies, allowing it to deliver equipment and process monitorGlenn Kosick, president of Woodgrove Technologies. “For ing as one package. Woodgrove can now offer a froth instance, if you’re on the back end of a bank of standard flota- characterization system to measure froth velocity, stability tion machines, you might be removing 0.3 to 0.5 tonnes per and colour; and bubble size, count and density, and it can hour per square metre. Whereas with this machine, you might provide timely suggestions for changes to equipment setbe running at 2.5 to three tonnes per hour per square metre.” tings. Additionally, its upfront grinding and cyclone control

Courtesy of Barrick Gold

The downturn’s effects The last several years of prolonged financial difficulties for the industry have forced some forward movement on innovation, as many projects simply would not be viable without new approaches. “I met with two majors that are on a joint venture in South America probably about a month ago and showed them not only the HydroFloat, but some other technology we have,” said Roberts. “And that was the whole point of the meeting: ‘Tell us what you have that’s new.’ Five, ten years ago, nobody would ever say that.” Woodgrove Technologies is also keeping busy during the downturn – without having to market itself, according to Kosick. “We’re hiring on almost a weekly basis here to try to keep up with the demand,” he said. But the downturn has also stifled research that could produce new innovations. “Most R&D divisions of companies have been severely affected by the mining downturn,” said Sergio Vianna, a minerals processing engineer at Hatch. “Therefore, there are a scant number This Barrick operation uses large conventional cells along with a Jameson cell for recovering of new solutions developed in mineral processing in coarse liberated particles the last few years.” To help size and select conventional cells, Hatch can stabilize surges and prevent rocks from reaching the would like to have a detailed study on the rate at which froth flotation circuit. can stably transport recovered minerals over the lip of the float On a larger scale, innovative flowsheet designs and cell. But Vianna has doubts that such a study can happen in reagent schemes are equally as important as the need for the current research climate. efficient flotation equipment. For example, Barrick is using Kym Runge, principal research fellow at the Julius its own patented flowsheet for a very complex refractory Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC) at the Univergold ore body. The process (“Mill-Chemistry-Float-Mill- sity of Queensland in Australia, is concerned that Australia’s Chemistry-Float”) involves floating the coarser particles in formerly healthy ecosystem of research centres, mine sites and the feed first, regrinding, and then floating the fines but consultancies is in danger, if trends continue, of being cut too enabled with appropriate chemistry to suit the coarse and far to spring back. Many global leaders in mineral processing fines separately. have passed through JKMRC or use tools developed there. The consultants at Hatch, like many working on research But research is continuing where it can. “We have a lot of and innovation, suggest adopting a mine-to-mill flowsheet other technologies which we’re working on,” said Barrick’s design tailored to a particular set of ore bodies. Gorain. “Obviously they are highly confidential, so we won’t A reinvented flowsheet might start with more targeted be able to talk about it. But in general, the whole idea is to blasting; it might intersperse flotation with grinding. Kristy develop solutions for various complex ore bodies.” Duffy, a minerals processing engineer at Hatch, suggested that Runge is working on a number of research projects. the new coarse flotation technologies might be useful in a pre- Progress made by equipment manufacturers notwithstanding, concentration stage to remove coarse gangue. The stages she thinks there is much more to understand about how turmight run: coarse grind, pre-concentration flotation, grind, bulence affects flotation in the bigger cells. “A lot of people rougher flotation, regrind and cleaning flotation. have just changed one variable and seen correlations and Gorain agrees that it could potentially be of use. “Non- made conclusions from that,” she said. flotation-based pre-concentration is actually much more She also sees a need to simulate the type of integrated, attractive, because you’re trying to deal with the waste right novel flowsheet envisioned at JKMRC. “Because they are lowin the mining before any major energy intensive comminution risk beasts, the mining industry,” she said, “so being able to is pursued,” he said. Yet if the ore mineralogy is too widely evaluate ‘What is going to be the economic benefit of putting and finely disseminated for other methods, then he thinks a coarse particle flotation unit in the middle of my grind?’ will flotation could potentially be an effective first concentration enable that to be adopted.” step. Asked what flotation circuits would look like in ten years’ More widespread interest is directed toward ore sorting, time, Runge was conservatively optimistic. “I’m hoping that which can help toss out gangue early on and features heavily we’ll start to see some of these new technologies start to be in mine-to-mill discussions. Roberts of Eriez said that several adopted,” she said. “I know we’ll be treating higher throughmajors were investigating it hand-in-hand with a potential puts. And so they will need to get bigger, but hopefully we’ll HydroFloat installation. also start to do things a little smarter.” CIM 42 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

Flotation that consumes at least 20% less power The results are in—The nextSTEP™ rotor/stator has been tested and proven to consume less power, while increasing hydrodynamic performance in forced-air flotation machines. The superior metallurgical performance of the nextSTEP mechanism shows increased recovery, resulting from dramatic improvements in mineral-bubble attachment rates. When installed, operators note at least a 20% reduction of power requirements and see better wear distribution for increased rotor/stator life. Upgrade to the nextSTEP™ rotor/stator mechanism in your new or existing forced-air flotation equipment and enjoy a strong positive impact on long-term operating costs. Find out more at www.flsmidth.com/nextSTEP

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hope for the future

The mine site, shown here in 2014, is just a few kilometres from the Arctic Ocean.

TMAC’s high-grade Hope Bay gold project in the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut is nearing start up. Beyond the focus on getting the processing plant running and reaching commercial production in the first quarter of 2017, the company has its sights set on an even more ambitious goal: making the region Canada’s next goldmining district. BY CORREY BALDWIN

n many ways Hope Bay is evidence of new market confidence. When TMAC went public in July 2015, it was the first mining IPO on the TSX since 2012. When Hope Bay’s previous owner, Newmont, approached Terry MacGibbon (now TMAC’s executive chairman) with the project in late August 2012, MacGibbon was immediately interested – the site came with three known deposits, plenty of previous exploratory drilling, and a huge amount of infrastructure already in place.

MacGibbon recruited Catharine Farrow (TMAC’s CEO) and Gord Morrison (president and chief technology officer) – former team members from FNX, the Sudbury-based mining company MacGibbon started in 1997. “We sort of put the old band back together,” he said. By December, Newmont and the newly formed TMAC had an agreement in principal, and a final agreement in January 2013. “We knew those types of deposits, and had done a lot of high-grade underground mining at FNX,” said MacGibbon. All photos courtesy of TMAC Resources.

November • Novembre 2016 | 45

Space to grow The Hope Bay property – located 160 km south of Cambridge Bay on the mainland – spans 1,000 km2 and includes an 80 km by 20 km Archean greenstone belt with three known deposits: Doris and Madrid in the north, and Boston to the south. Doris, the first deposit to be developed, is just a few kilometres from the Arctic Ocean. “There was enough drilling on the three known deposit areas that we could put together a development and mine plan that would support a 20-year reserve life,” said Farrow. “That was one of the truly critical pieces of the puzzle.” The similarities between the Hope Bay belt and other Archean belts, such as those at Timmins, Kirkland Lake, Val d’Or and Red Lake, has not gone unnoticed, and TMAC is hoping Hope Bay will prove to be a similarly successful gold region. “We see this as a Timmins or a Red Lake kind of environment, where we’re mining there for generations,” she said. “So what we have to develop now is a pipeline of projects at different development stages that fits with the whole concept of building a multi-generational belt.” TMAC’s plan is to sequentially develop the belt, beginning with Doris, then Madrid, and finally Boston. TMAC will use standard underground mining methods at all three deposits, primarily retreat long-hole stoping with overhand cut-and-fill. 46 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

According to Hope Bay’s prefeasibility study (PFS), as of June 2015 the three deposits contain Proven and Probable Reserves of 3.5 million ounces grading 7.7 g/t (and Measured and Indicated Resources of 4.5 million ounces of gold measuring an average of 9.2 g/t). Doris, where the processing plant will be located, contains 870,000 ounces grading 11.8 g/t. These reserves are set to grow. Previous owners had planned for open-pit mining, meaning reserves have only been established to depths of a few hundred metres – and just 150 metres at Doris, the point where the deposit hits a diabase dyke. “These deposits have the potential to go one, two, three thousand metres at depth,” said MacGibbon. “So we felt that there had to be mineralization below, and that the potential to add is significant.” Farrow agrees: “Most of the gold-bearing structures in Archean belts are relatively upright, and continue at depth,” she said. “We’ve been able now to demonstrate that at Doris.” Recent test drilling beneath the diabase dyke at Doris has confirmed additional mineralization (down to 400 metres), officially pushing Doris beyond the initial five years of production indicated in the PFS. Establishing that the resource continued was key, and this success helped the company raise $56.5 million last July. Farrow also points to Hope Bay’s immense greenfield potential: “If the belt were in more southern parts of Canada it would have been much more thoroughly explored,” she said. “It’s an explorationist’s paradise. There’s so much prospectivity. We’re also really excited by the prospectivity of Boston, but it’s another approximately 50 km to the south. We have to ensure that this is done systematically.” “We haven’t even set foot on Boston yet,” said MacGibbon, “and in my opinion, Boston is going to be our flagship. But we have to concentrate.” According to MacGibbon, the key to Hope Bay is getting a starter mine up and running. “We have to focus very carefully on getting Doris into production,” he said. TMAC anticipates the costs leading up to production including items such as permitting costs and environmental bonding, will be a relatively low $325 million. This is due in large part to the amount of previous infrastructure on site, which Farrow calls invaluable. Operating costs are pegged at US$638 per ounce with all-in sustaining costs of US$785 per ounce. Previous infrastructure includes two gravel air strips, the Doris camp, power plants, 27.5 million litres of fuel storage, underground workings, a tailings facility, a jetty facility at Roberts Bay, a haul road from the port to the Doris camp and an eight-kilometre all-weather road from the camp to Madrid. “If you include everything that’s been done on the entire belt, including exploration drilling and infrastructure, and underground development, we’re looking at about a billion dollars’ worth of infrastructure,” said Farrow. “Basically what we’ve done is add the last few hundred million dollars.” The bulk of the money has been spent on the building, delivery,

Courtesy of TMAC Resources

“We saw that the potential was immense, and moved fairly quickly. We thought, this is like buying Timmins in 1910 – but with a billion dollars of infrastructure already on it.” TMAC raised $50 million in private financing and purchased the property in March 2013. TMAC adopted a management approach that they believed would make Hope Bay a success this time around: “We understand the concept of bootstrapping and just doing things a little smaller with a highly-focused management group,” said Farrow. “Our VPs were very much involved in the technical analysis of the project. I go to site a lot more than you probably have ever heard of a CEO going to site. That’s part of our success. In our opinion, as a small company, we have to be able to do that to ensure that we keep the numbers of consultants and that kind of thing down.” The Hope Bay area had been explored off and on since the 1970s and was originally explored by BHP Billiton who purchased the site in 1988. The property then passed to a junior joint venture in 1999 and Newmont in 2007. Newmont put $800 million into the site, but in 2012 they placed Hope Bay in care and maintenance. “Newmont had to make some tough capital allocation decisions,” said Farrow. She explained that despite putting the project on hold, Newmont wanted to see the belt developed, and has worked closely with TMAC to this end. “We were chosen as the management group during an auction process to try to achieve those goals.” Today Newmont is a major shareholder, owning 29.2 per cent of TMAC. “That relationship remains,” said Farrow.

project profile

Clockwise, from top left: The majority of the components for the modular processing plant arrived on the container ship BBC Elbe in late August; a view of the outside of the process building; a view of the process plant building in mid-September; the plant arrived in 200 forty-foot shipping containers.

and assembly of the processing plant, further underground development and site infrastructure.

Modular milling TMAC also inherited a partially completed processing plant, being built in South Africa. But TMAC instead turned to Gekko, an Australian company specializing in modular plants, which are ideal for shipping to remote locations. The Gekko plant arrived from Australia in over 200 forty-foot shipping containers during the 2016 sealift. A modular design provides more than just logistical ease with transportation and set-up. “You can’t make things properly modular unless you can shrink them down and get the energy density up,” said Gekko co-founder and technical director Sandy Gray, who flew to site to supervise the assembly. “So we’ve got a much smaller package, but with the capacity to do relatively high tonnes.” They also have low start-up costs and ease of maintenance. “Because we made every piece less than 20 tonnes, we can now fly in pretty much every single component in the process plant,” said Gray. “So if something big breaks, you don’t have to wait until next summer for a ship to get in.”

The plant also has a greater flexibility, especially with high-grade ores. “Because of the configuration of the plant, we can pretty much handle anything they throw at us,” said Gray. “It doesn’t have the same limitations as some of the conventional circuit processing plants.” Gekko’s plants make use of pre-concentration and an intensive gravity circuit, through their Python technology. The result, Gray explained, is a lower environmental footprint: “We get a lot of the gold out right up front with the gravity. We use less cyanide because we have a much smaller mass of material that has to get leached, and because it’s in a much more effective form to leach.” TMAC expects the gravity circuit to provide about 50 per cent of the gold from Doris ores. “We also got the building height down, so we don’t need as much energy to heat the building,” he said. “And by going to a very fine crushing before gravity, we’ve taken out 25 to 30 per cent of the energy of a conventional crushing and grinding circuit.” The plant, which will have two 1,000 t/d Python pre-concentrator lines, will begin with a mill capacity of 1,000 t/d before ramping up after a year of production to 2,000 t/d. Tailings from the accompanying concentrate treatment plant November • Novembre 2016 | 47

Project specs

will be held in a tailings facility, where it will be filtered and eventually placed in the tailings facility, located two kilometres east of Doris.

In August, the Nunavut Impact Review Board (NIRB), Nunavut’s environmental assessment agency, approved TMAC’s request to amend their project certificate at Doris. A second amendment under review by the Nunavut Water Board would allow TMAC to increase their tailings from 458,000 tonnes to 2.5 million tonnes, to accommodate an expected increase in production at Doris. “We are placing more Doris material in the tailings impoundment area and changing our discharge point of mine water from discharge into a fresh water creek to discharge into the ocean,” said Farrow. “Basically it’s preparing for larger operations than was possible with the original permits.” Farrow also touts the benefits of operating in the jurisdiction of Nunavut. “It’s a very mature way of looking at projects,” she said of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement (NLCA). “We know exactly who owns what land, what is Inuit-owned land, what is Crown land, and it’s very clear who you’re dealing with. That makes it considerably less complicated than most parts of the country.” Within Nunavut, TMAC deals with the Kitikmeot Inuit Association (KIA), which under the NLCA is tasked with overseeing economic development in the region. KIA has both a 1 per cent NSR and 1.4 per cent of the outstanding shares of TMAC, which MacGibbon said allows both parties to be aligned from both a production and corporate point of view. The reopening of the mine is good news for the Kitikmeot region, which was hit hard when Newmont pulled out in 2012, leaving northern companies at a loss for contracts. TMAC has a program aimed at training Inuit workers, and makes a point of hiring Inuit-owned companies to provide services on site. These include Summit Air Kitikmeot, for transportation of mining crews; the Kitikmeot-based drilling company Geotech Ekutak, which has a training program for drillers; KCMD, the Kitikmeot arm of Cementation, which began training underground miners during Newmont’s ownership; and the Inuit-owned Nuna Logistics, which was contracted to maintain the site after Newmont put operations on hold, and which has continued to work with TMAC on reopening the Doris camp and other infrastructure projects. “Huge numbers of the population in Northern communities are under the age of 15. These people will need jobs, and jobs that train them with transferable skills,” said Farrow. “Certainly entry level jobs are important, but ultimately we want to see young people taking on skilled trades and becoming geologists and engineers and doctors, and staying in the communities.” To this end, TMAC has been hiring summer students who have gone to attend colleges in southern Canada. “They’re the future, hopefully, of mine management,” said Farrow. CIM 48 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

Courtesy of TMAC Resources

Clear lines

Underground mining date

October 2015

Expected stockpile for process plant startup

110,000 tonnes of ore grading 15 g/t

Processing plant startup

Dec. 2016

Mining methods

Processing

Throughput Average grade (life of mine) All-in-sustaining-cost (LOM) Pre-production Capex (est.) Sustaining Capex (est.) Closure costs (est.) Total capital cost (est.)

underground, longhole stoping, overhand cut and fill gravity separation, flotation, cyanidation, resin absorption 730,000 tonnes per year starting in 2018 7.6 grams/tonne US$785/oz $219 million $393.1 million $42.7 million $641.4 million

Mine life

20 years

Payback period

1.7 years

NPV (after tax)

$626 million

Annual production (avg.) Gold price assumption (mineral reserve)

160,000 oz (183,000 oz (avg.) first five years) US$1250/oz

An Introduction to Cutoff Grade: Theory and Practice in Open Pit and Underground Mines (with a new section on blending optimization strategy) Cut-off grades are essential in determining the economic feasibility and mine life of a project. The fundamentals of cut-off grade calculation, first established by Ken Lane forty years ago, are revisited. In this course it is shown how direct and indirect costs, opportunity costs imposed by operational constraints, and other factors, such as political risk, legal, environmental and regulatory requirements, must be taken into account. Mathematical equations are developed and graphical analytical methods are displayed, which can be used to solve most cut-off grade estimation problems. It is shown how minimum cut-off grades are estimated and how they must be modified to take into account constraints imposed by mine or mill capacity, or by limits on sales volumes. Multiple practical examples are given, illustrating the role of cut-off grades in mine planning, in allocating material to different processes, in optimizing mill operating conditions, and in poly-metallic deposits.

INSTRUCTOR Jean-Michel Rendu, JMR Consultants, USA • DATE To be determined for 2017 • 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 answer 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 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 Marcelo Godoy, Newmont Mining Corp., Denver; Jean-Michel Rendu, JMR Consultants, USA; Roussos Dimitrakopoulos, McGill University, Canada; and Guy Desharnais, SGS Canada Inc., Canada • DATE September 11-13, 2017 • LOCATION Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Optimization and Risk Management in Strategic Mine Planning: Unearthing Material Value in Mining Complexes Growing volatility and uncertainty in global metal markets highlight the need to focus on new technologies that can unveil significant value and reliability to the performance of mining operations. This three-day course explores the foundations of strategic mine planning and stresses the new generation of applied technologies related to: (a) simultaneous optimization of integrated mining and processing operations, and (b) orebody risk management with new stochastic mine planning optimization developments.

INSTRUCTORS Roussos Dimitrakopoulos and Ryan Goodfellow, McGill University, Canada; and Joe Kraft, Minemax, USA • DATE September 13-15, 2017 • LOCATION Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Quantitative Mineral Resource Assessments: An Integrated Approach to Planning for Exploration Risk Reduction Learn about exploration risk analysis for strategic planning. Understand how to demonstrate how operational mineral deposit models can reduce uncertainties; make estimates of the number of undiscovered deposits; and integrate the information and examine the economic possibilities. INSTRUCTOR Don Singer, USA • DATE October 2017 • LOCATION Montreal, Quebec, Canada

W AT E R T R E AT M E N T

| technology

Solving the selenium problem The science behind selenium in the environment is young and the technology even younger, but for miners managing it, the element is an immediate concern

Courtesy of GE Water

By Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco

GE Water’s ABMet technology is a biological treatment approach which uses a packed bed reactor system.

etween 1974 and 1984 something caused severe deformities in the fish and wiped out 19 of Belews Lake’s 20 species at alarming rates in North Carolina. The scenic manmade lake in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains was built by Duke Energy as a cooling water reservoir for one of its coal-fired power plants. It took scientists until 1984 to figure out the unlikely culprit: selenium in the power plant’s effluent. At 20 parts per billion, selenium concentration in the effluent released into Belews Lake in the 1970s was well below the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) guidelines for safe levels at the time, of 35 parts per billion. In 1987, the EPA revised its recommended criteria for selenium concentration in freshwater to five parts per billion. Little did anyone realize at the time that over the next 30 years the problem of selenium poisoning would slowly, gradually grow into a conundrum for not just the power generation industry, but also for agriculture and mining. The reason selenium was an unlikely culprit is that it is a naturally-occurring metalloid found in soil, rocks, shales, coal and phosphate deposits. In low levels, it is also a nutrient vital to all animal life. But when its harmless elemental form is disturbed by industrial activities, it oxidizes and changes chemically into a water-soluble species. When these accumulate in aquatic ecosystems, selenium becomes toxic and lethal. What constitutes toxic levels, including to humans, has been revised — and continues to be so — by scientists. “The poster child of selenium poisoning, is the two-headed baby trout,” said David Kratochvil, president and CEO of BioteQ Environmental Technologies, which specializes in water treatment solutions for mining. Selenium poisoning in aquatic ecosystems continue to this day in the United States and Canada. According to Environment Canada, elevated selenium concentrations in fish have been found around mining operations in this country, including coal mines in British Columbia and Alberta and uranium mines in Saskatchewan, compared with fish from non-mining areas. In the summer of 2016, the EPA once again lowered its guidelines, this time to 1.5 parts per billion. In Canada, the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) sets the recommended level at one part per billion. Recently, the B.C. government set it at two parts per billion.

November • Novembre 2016 | 51

Courtesy of Seabridge Gold

have developed biological technologies that use bacteria to do the heavy lifting. One of these is GE Water’s ABMet technology, which uses a packed bed reactor system and activated carbon media. As water travels through the media, bacterial growth is promoted on its surface. The bacteria form a sticky biofilm that transforms the soluble selenium species into elemental selenium, which can be discarded in a landfill. “It’s very similar to existing media filter systems used to filter out solids in drinking water or industrial applications with the exception we’re using bacteria within the system, which specifically target and remove selenium from wastewater/runoff streams,” said Nelson Fonseca, the company’s global product manager. “The lowest selenium guarantee we have been asked to provide in the mining industry was 3.8 parts per billion, which we did offer upon a successful on-site pilot study that demonstrated that level of performance Veolia Water Technologies’ AnoxKaldnes systems, on the other hand, uses moving bed biological reactor technology. In this system, instead of a fixed media, free-moving polyethylene media is circulated in the reactor to grow the biofilm. Another approach is INOTEC’s electrobiochemical reactor system that uses electrons to provide the bacteria with energy to more efficiently transform the selenium VI to elemental selenium. Since biological systems treat high volumes of water, they tend to be quite large, but companies are trying to address that. GE has introduced a modular ABMet with a 50 per cent to 75 per cent footprint reduction. Envirogen Technologies, which like GE has a fluidized bed reactor system, also boasts more compact systems that do not sacrifice effectiveness. Frontier Water Systems has developed a modular biological treatment system called SeHAWK. Biological technologies are considered best in class, but as selenium accumulates in water systems, the best is increasingly not good enough to meet stricter regulations. Depending on all the variables, sometimes the technologies can reduce selenium to below five parts per billion. Sometimes it is 10 parts or more. Technologies that can achieve the most stringent selenium thresholds are largely emerging ones, said Gulshen Tairova, founder and CEO of EnviraMet Inc., a company engaged in the development of water treatment technologies. That leaves mining companies such as Seabridge Gold, whose Kerr−Sulphurets−Mitchell (KSM) project is one of the world’s largest undeveloped gold projects, in a tough spot.

Courtesy of Bioteq

Seabridge’s Mitchell deposit, revealed by the retreat of the Mitchell glacier, contains an estimated 10 million ounces of gold as well as naturally elevated levels of selenium.

A view inside the mobile pilot plant used during the Seabridge KerrSulphurets-Mitchell selenium removal pilot

Selenium removal technology

Achieving these new levels is easier said than done. Selenium is a slippery, multi-headed problem for mining. For starters, any technology has to treat large volumes of water to remove tiny traces of selenium. Any given wastewater can contain various selenium species with different solubility, toxicity and oxidization states that react differently to treatments and water temperature, and compete with other constituents. One of the most common species, selenium IV, is relatively easy to remove with traditional water treatment technologies. However, the other one, selenium VI, which has a very high oxidation state, is an enormous technical challenge. In the last decade, many have attempted to crack the selenium VI problem with dozens of approaches. Some have tried physical methods, such as reverse osmosis, nanofiltration and ion exchange. Others have tried chemical methods to reduce selenium VI to selenium IV or elemental selenium. And some 52 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

“Our KSM project site has naturally elevated levels of selenium,” said Brent Murphy, the company’s VP of environmental affairs. “As soon as we start disturbing the area for development of the mine, there is the potential for the selenium to increase in the aquatic environments downstream of the mineral deposits. We needed a method that was much more effective than the biological method to treat to low concentrations of less than one part per billion.” As well, the KSM project simply did not have the geographical space for a large biological water treatment plant. To find an alternative, Seabridge turned to BioteQ. The result was Selen-IX, a system which combines a low-cost ion exchange resin with electrochemical reduction to selectively remove selenium from mining wastewater. In the system, water passes through an ion exchange resin that captures all selenium-producing final effluent, with residual selenium concentrations well below one part per billion. When the resin reaches its capacity, it is regenerated and the selenium stripped from the resin reports into a small volume of brine solution. This brine solution is then processed through an electro cell in which iron is released to react and precipitate selenium out of the solution into an inorganic solid containing approximately 50 per cent iron by dry weight. The brine solution, now free of selenium, is recycled back to the ion exchange process, thus eliminating any liquid waste typically associated with ion exchange. “We have tested the solids. They are non-hazardous and, in fact, we talked to steel manufacturers in the US who expressed interest in taking it to use as feed stock,” said Kratochvil. Last year, BioteQ and Seabridge ran a pilot project as part of KSM’s environmental assessment approval process that consistently reduced the selenium to less than one part per billion. Seabridge and BioteQ are now in the process of designing a small scale Selen-IX treatment water plant. “BioteQ was very instrumental in ensuring that we have a mining project,” said Murphy. BioteQ, which is running a pilot scale plant for another mine in B.C., doesn’t consider the Selen-IX process to be a silver bullet. “Every mine water is different and every mine has a different receiving environment. Consequently, the approach to selenium treatment must be site-specific,” said Kratochvil. “The need for this is difficult for the industry to embrace because until recently lime treatment was relied upon as the treatment that can be applied everywhere for almost everything. This is no longer the case due to new regulations, and not just selenium regulations.”

| technology Courtesy of GE Water

W AT E R T R E AT M E N T

The search continues

The ABMet process has been deployed at mine and coal power generation sites.

BioteQ is not the only company that has turned to ion exchange, which until recently was dismissed as ineffective. Envirogen Technologies has developed a new High Efficiency Ion Exchange process it says is capable of removing selenium to less than five parts per billion. In fact, many are rushing to solve the selenium problem with affordable and effective technologies that can meet the new limits, including pre-treatments for biological technologies. One approach some believe has potential is zero valent iron, although research is still ongoing. Even new chemical approaches are being considered. EnviraMet’s Tairova said her company has developed a new patented chemical system that can reduce selenium to less than one part per billion using stable chemicals at a cost comparable to biological methods. And over at the University of Waterloo, Andrew Holmes, a chemical engineering PhD student, is developing a solution using nanotechnology. To understand the emerging science of nanotechnology requires wrapping one’s mind around the fact that, thanks to nanomaterials’ vast surface area compared to their volume, there are literally enough nanomaterials in something the size of a sugar cube to cover an entire football field. That makes the potential to treat large volumes of water to remove selenium traces with a small-footprint system enormous. “You can utilize the advantages of nanomaterials, including high surface area and high catalytic power in order to treat large volumes of ultra-low concentration wastewater more efficiently,” said Holmes. “The potential impact of this technology, along with minimizing both treatment costs and chemical usage, will provide a platform for treating water to high purity for the protection of aquatic environments.” There is still much work to be done, but with the new regulations, awareness and interest in solving the problem, the solution could be getting closer. CIM November • Novembre 2016 | 53

Co es L nf t m ’in er e ai scr nt ip no nce en ti w re an on op gi t d à l en str isp a c . ati on on on ib fér l e en en ce lig ne .

January 17

to au

19 JanVier 2016 | westin hotel | ottawa, canada

49th annual

canadian mineral processors conference

we are pleased to invite you and your colleagues to attend the 49th Annual Conference of the Canadian Mineral Processors (cmp). for almost 50 years, the cmp conference has provided a forum for discussing best practices and the latest improvements in mineral processing technology. more than 500 delegates attended last year’s conference and profited from the outstanding opportunities in networking, knowledge sharing and personal development the cmp conference consistently offers. the technical program is the heart and soul of the conference with close to 40 technical papers presented by fellow mill operators and mineral processing professionals. in addition to discussions on canadian milling practices, international speakers will weigh in on the mineral processing challenges they encounter abroad. we look forward to you joining us in the capital this January. – the cmp executive

49e conférence annuelle des

minéralurgistes du canada

nous sommes heureux de vous inviter, ainsi que vos collègues, à participer à la 49ème Conférence annuelle des minéralurgistes du Canada. depuis près de 50 ans, nous préservons notre mission de créer un événement où la dissémination de méthodes innovatrices d’opération de concentrateurs et de technologies émergentes sont à l’honneur. plus de 500 délégués ont participé à la conférence l’an dernier pour profiter de cette occasion exceptionnelle de réseautage, de partage d’expériences industrielles et de développement professionnel.

encore cette année, le programme technique sera au cœur de l’évènement avec près de 40 articles présentés par des opérateurs d’usines et autres professionnels de la minéralurgie. pendant que plusieurs se concentreront sur des problématiques typiquement canadiennes, d’autres présentateurs discuteront des défis techniques auxquels ils font face à l’étranger. en espérant vous voir en grand nombre dans la capitale canadienne en janvier prochain.

– l’exécutif de la société canadienne du traitement des minerais

54 | CIM Magazine | Vol. 11, No. 7

Al Kuiper

ACCOMMODATIONS | HÉBERGEMENT

a special rate of $209 (standard/premium) and $259 (deluxe) which includes complementary internet has been negotiated at the westin hotel (reference the canadian mineral processors conference). the westin hotel will only guarantee these rooms until January 3, 2017, so book early to avoid disappointment.

GENERAL INFORMATION | RENSEIGNEMENTS GÉNÉRAUX

held at the westin hotel in ottawa in January, the conference will feature presentations on various aspects of mineral processing including comminution, flotation, gold and iron ore processing, mineralogy, mill optimization, process control and projects.

un nombre limité de chambres a été négocié avec l’hôtel westin à un tarif spécial de 209$ en occupation simple/double et 259$ pour une chambre de luxe. Veuillez noter que les chambres sont retenues à votre intention jusqu’au 3 janvier 2017. Veuillez réserver votre chambre le plus tôt possible en communiquant directement à l’hôtel westin.

la conférence se tiendra en janvier à l’hôtel westin à ottawa. elle comprendra des présentations traitant de divers aspects minéralurgiques tels que la comminution, la flottation, le traitement de l’or et du fer, la minéralogie, l’optimisation des usines de traitement, le contrôle de procédés et les opérations minières.

SHORT COURSES | COURS ABRÉGÉS COURSE / COURS

PRESENTERS / PRÉSENTATEURS

DATE

COST / COÛT

Attendance is limited, please register early! La participation est limitée, s’il vous plaît, inscrivez-vous tôt! Activated Carbon in Gold Recovery Utilizing the Carbon-in-Pulp and Carbonin-Leach Processes

John rogans, KemiX

January 16 janvier (pm)

$200

Geometallurgical Approach to Plant Design and Optimization

doug hatfield and david hatton, sgs

January 16 janvier

$400

Bulk Solids Handling: How to Avoid Being a Statistic!

tracy holmes, Jenike & Johanson ltd.

January 16 janvier

$400

anthony yell, tema isenmann inc.

January 16 janvier

$400

Optimization and Debottlenecking, A Multidisciplinary Approach to Success!

michel ruel, carole prévost, françois lavoie and marc tardif, BBa inc.

January 16 janvier

$400

Get it Sorted: An Introduction to Sensor Based Ore Sorting

Jorn rohleder, outotec

January 16 janvier

$400

Jason palmer, sgs

January 16 janvier

$400

Screening Theory & Practical Considerations in Operating Screening Equipment Efficiently

Thickened Tailings Management – Dewatering to Stacking

All costs include lunch, coffee breaks and course materials. Tous les coûts comprennent le dîner, les pauses-café et le matériel de cours. November/Novembre 2016 | 55

Al Kuiper

AUTHORS | AUTEURS

authors, session chairs and regional representatives must register as conference delegates. a speaker’s breakfast will be provided the day of their presentation at 7:00. authors, please contact John chaulk (john.chaulk@canada.ca) for presentation information.

tous les auteurs, les présidents de sessions et les représentants régionaux doivent s’inscrire comme délégués à la conférence. un déjeuner sera servi le jour de leur présentation à 7 h. auteurs, veuillez contacter John chaulk (john.chaulk@canada.ca) pour obtenir de l’information au sujet des présentations.

TECHNICAL PROGRAM | PROGRAMME TECHNIQUE TUESDAY JANUARY 19 | MARDI 19 JANVIER 8:30

8:45

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 20 | MERCREDI 20 JANVIER

opening remarks | SCOTT MARTIN

FLOTATION

PLENARY PRESENTATION

8:30

flash flotation circuit design considerations | BEN MURPHY

tBa

8:55

improvement of Valuable mineral transport and gangue drainage in froth flotation | BENOÎT LEVASSEUR

9:20

strategies to manage cell hydrodynamics data to improve the efficiency of flotation circuits | JOSE R. HERNANDEZ-AGUILAR

COMMINUTION 9:30

fine grinding, a refresher | ALEX DOLL