HEAPING UP RICHES The Talvivaara Mining Company has a large mine in Eastern Finland and mines nickel and zinc. Joseph Altham spoke to Harri Natunen, Talvivaara’s CEO, to find out how the company has succeeded in exploiting its abundant reserves of nickel with the aid of an unusual and innovative technology.
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he Talvivaara mine, located near the town of Sotkamo, has some of the biggest reserves of nickel outside Russia. Occupying a huge site, 60 square kilometres in area, Talvivaara has two deposits, Kuusilampi and Kolmisoppi, with total resources of 1.55 billon tonnes of ore. The mine’s resources contain some 3.4 million tonnes of nickel and 7.6 million tonnes of zinc. The Geological Survey of Finland started to explore the Talvivaara area back in the late 1970s, but for decades the deposits remained unexploited. In 2004, the Talvivaara Mining Company obtained the right to mine these deposits and managed to produce the first metals
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from the mine four years later. The mine yielded over 16,000 tonnes of nickel in 2011. Now Talvivaara is endeavouring to ramp up production, with a view to producing as much as 50,000 tonnes of nickel per year along with 90,000 tonnes of zinc. On this basis, Talvivaara could eventually become capable of producing some 2.3 per cent of the world’s annual nickel supply. The Talvivaara mine is not only a valuable asset, but has also created employment opportunities for the people of the Kainuu region. “We have 500 employees,” said Mr Natunen, “and we provide work for another 400 people in outside companies that we have contracted to help us.”
Bioheapleaching If the Finns discovered more than 30 years ago that there were substantial deposits of base metals at Talvivaara, then why did they wait until the 21st century before opening the mine? Part of the answer, as Mr Natunen explained, comes down to money. Originally, the owner of the mining rights at Talvivaara was the steel firm, Outokumpu. However, Outokumpu decided against developing the mine and sold off the mining rights in 2004 instead. “We have to keep in mind that when Outokumpu studied the mining possibilities in the 1980s, the price of nickel was lower.” Nickel is now more expensive, making the mine economically viable.
