This year has been a progressive one for mining companies in the Sudbury area. But that doesn't mean all the mining stories fell into the good news category.
Vale Base Metals (VBM), the largest mining employer in Sudbury, announced in July the company was moving forward to rejuvenate the historic Stobie Mine property with the creation of a new open pit operation.
Gord Gilpin, director of Ontario Operations for Vale Base Metals, said the new mine would be a significant four-year project carried out at a cost of more than $200 million.
"Today we celebrate the signing of an agreement that marks the beginning of activity at Stobie Open Pit. In some ways, it's actually a resumption, because there's a lot of history behind the Stobie site," Gilpin told the news conference.
He said the project would be carried out using the services of mining contractor Thiess, along with Indigenous businesses Z'Gamok Construction LP (ZCLP) and Aki-Eh Dibinwewziwin Limited Partnership (ADLP) and the United Steelworkers union.
"This is a $205-million contract representing a new era of co-operation and partnership," said Gilpin.
It was later in the year that VBM confirmed there were layoffs taking place in Sudbury and throughout the company. The layoffs were confirmed in the first week of December. Without revealing any specific numbers, the company said.
“This week we initiated staff changes aimed at making Vale Base Metals more resilient, agile and competitive across our assets for sustained long-term growth,” the Toronto-based subsidiary said in an emailed statement to BNN Bloomberg.
“This new decentralized structure means that some of our people in non-operating roles will be leaving us,” said VBM, in that statement.
"We have initiated staff reductions across all our corporate functions around the world," said an email confirmation from Jeff Gaulin, Vale’s general manager of corporate affairs.
"This means good people leaving our company in every corporate function, such as human resources, communications, finance, etc., at both our corporate centres as well as these staff located at our operations,” he added.
The company also said discussions about the changes are underway with company employees.
"Out of respect to these colleagues, we won’t comment further on these changes until that process is complete. We had to undertake this action to be competitive in an increasingly challenging market for mining," said the company.
Nickel miners struggled with a volatile market that was so intense that the London Metals Exchange reported a high price of US$19,775 per metric tonne in April. Currently, in the final week of 2024, the price is roughly US$15,111 per tonne.
Many analysts have said the nickel market is being upset by the increase in nickel production in Indonesia and China.
Reuters, the business news agency, reported that the world is facing a third consecutive year of nickel oversupply, according to the International Nickel Study Group (INSG).
Other mining news in Sudbury could be regarded as more optimistic.
Magna Mining, a fast-moving Sudbury mining startup company, took a big step forward by acquiring a working copper mine in the Sudbury basin along with a raft of promising properties from Polish-headquartered miner KGHM International.
It was last summer that Magna began work on the former Crean Hill mine west of Sudbury. In September, the company signed an agreement to acquire the operating McCreedy West copper mine in a $33.3-million cash-and-share deal.
“Since the inception of our company, Magna has strived to acquire past producing mines in Sudbury, and the acquisition of these particular properties has always been a primary objective of ours,” said the company in a Sept. 12 news release.
“It has taken many years to get to this point, but we believe this is just the beginning of the growth of our company,” said Magna.
While the price of nickel has been shaky throughout 2024, it was a completely different story for the price of gold. The precious metal began the year hovering at just over US$2,000 an ounce. It then began taking off in late February rising higher and higher until hitting a peak in early October at just under US$2,800 an ounce, a record high price for gold.
It was definitely welcome news for the North's newest gold mine, the Côté Gold mine south of Gogama built at a cost of nearly $3 billion, near the Watershed.
Côté Gold is owned by Iamgold , which celebrated two significant milestones in the past year. The first gold bar for the new mine was poured on March 31.
Less than two months later on May 22, the company celebrated the ribbon cutting and official opening of the new mine.
The Côté Gold operation is expected to be one of Canada's largest gold producers with a mine life of 18 to 20 years. Between now and 2030, gold output at Côté is expected to be 495,000 ounces, each year. Over the life of the mine, output is expected to average 365,000 ounces per year, said a company news release.
The mine is also expected to provide more than 500 jobs annually and spending on goods and services for the Northern Ontario mine supply sector will be hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
Len Gillis covers mining and health care for Sudbury.com.
