Production under way at Lac des Isles project

It has been explored since the early 1970s and suffered several delays at the permitting stage, but Canada’s first platinum group metals (PGM) mine is finally up and running.

Situated 60 miles northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., the mine is owned by Lac des Iles Mines, a wholly owned subsidiary of Toronto-listed North American Palladium (NAP).

Annual production is slated to be 120,000 oz. palladium, 6,000 oz. platinum, 12,000 oz. gold, 1.5 million lb. copper and 1 million lb. nickel. Reserves are estimated at 7.4 million tons averaging 0.18 oz. PGM and 0.01 oz. gold per ton, plus 0.1% copper and 0.1% nickel. Since 1991, development and permitting costs have amounted to $10 million.

At a recent mines and minerals symposium in Toronto, NAP President Dale McDoulett said the mill has been operating 24 hours a day since Nov. 30, 1993. It was first tested Nov. 15 and, as with most new mills, several adjustments were required. The first batch of ore was milled around Nov. 20. Initial production will be from the Robey zone, which will be mined from an open pit to a cutoff depth of 500 ft. At a production rate of 3,000 tons per day, or about 1 million tons per year, the zone is estimated to last seven years.

Power comes from four 2,000-kW deisel generators and various smaller units. The process is expensive, however, and the company is looking for other, more affordable sources of power.

Ore will be milled on site, with the initial grinding circuit consisting of one rod mill and three ball mills. The ore will then be subjected to a multi-phase flotation process that employs several different sizes of Denver cells to produce a concentrate.

Between 20,000 and 30,000 tons of concentrate will be produced annually. The concentrate will then be trucked to Falconbridge’s Sudbury, Ont. smelter, where a matte will be produced and subsequently shipped to Norway for refining.

The mine and mill will employ 60-65 full-time workers. An additional 6-8 will work for the trucking contractor responsible for transporting the concentrate to Sudbury.

At last report (T.N.M., Sept. 27/93), North American Palladium was involved in a legal dispute with Dalhousie Oil (CDN).