Corporate and political dignitaries gathered outside Chapleau for the official opening of Newmont Goldcorp’s Borden Mine.
Canada’s first all-electric mine features leading-edge health and safety controls, digital mining technologies and processes, and a battery-powered fleet of low-carbon energy vehicles.
Borden is headed toward commercial production for the fourth quarter of this year. The mine is expected to create 250 jobs for local and Indigenous people in the Chapleau area.
The Chapleau-area operation will benefit the company’s Timmins operations, 180 kilometres to the east, as gold-bearing ore from Borden will be processed at the Porcupine complex.
“Borden opens a new gold mining district in Ontario and profitably extends operations at the Porcupine complex near Timmins,” said company president Tom Palmer in a Sept. 23 news release.
“In addition, Borden’s electric underground fleet will eliminate diesel particulate matter from the underground environment and lower greenhouse gas emissions. This will help reduce energy costs, protect employee health and minimize impacts to the environment.”
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Borden is fully permitted for commercial operation and partnership agreements have been signed with area First Nations. Both the federal and provincial governments each contributed $5 million toward the electrification of the mine.
Newmont Goldcorp has a land package in the area of a 1,000 square kilometres in a relatively underexplored mineral belt in northeastern Ontario with no mining history.
The company has said it will continue to test the extensions of the Borden deposit while evaluating their entire property to develop a line-up of exploration targets.
On hand for the inauguration were: Energy, Northern Development and Mines Minister Greg Rickford, Timmins MPP Gilles Bisson, Chapleau Cree First Nation Chief Keeter Corston, Chapleau Ojibwe First Nation Chief Anita Stephens, Brunswick House First Nation Chief Cheryl St. Denis, Michipicoten First Nation Chief Pat Tangie, Chapleau Mayor Michael Levesque, Timmins Mayor George Pirie, Newmont Goldcorp’s Regional Senior Vice-President for North America Todd White, and Marc Lauzier, general manager of the Porcupine and Borden Mines.
Denver-based Newmont acquired Vancouver’s Goldcorp last January in a US$10-billion deal to create the world’s largest gold mining company.
Their Northern Ontario assets include Porcupines Gold Mines in Timmins, the fly-in Musselwhite Mine north of Thunder Bay and the Red Lake mine complex in northwestern Ontario, with other mine development projects in the pipeline including the Century open pit in Timmins and Cochenour at Red Lake.
