Thompson Creek Metals celebrates opening of Mount Milligan

1 of 2On October 8, 2013, the opening of Thompson Creek Metals' Mount Milligan mine was celebrated with a special ceremony. — Kevin Wallace/Wallace Studios photo

2 of 2The Mount Milligan mine is a conventional truck-shovel open pit mine designed to process 60,000 tonnes per day of copper concentrate. — Kevin Wallace/Wallace Studios photo

It was a momentous occasion on October 8, 2013, when Thompson Creek Metal's Mount Milligan mine was opened with a special ceremony.

People from all over North America, the communities surrounding the mine, First Nations, the workforce, contractors and others gathered at the site to celebrate a project that has been years in the making. The dedication ceremony included speakers such as Thompson Creek Metals' recently retired CEO Kevin Loughrey.

Production at Mount Milligan, a copper and gold mine located approximately 90 miles northwest of Prince George in central B.C., actually began at the end of August.

"With a mine like this, we're moving 110,000 tonnes a day at that mine and 60,000 tonnes are being put through the mill," said Loughrey. "It's quite a big production and it doesn't start by flipping on and off a switch. You do it very sequentially, piece by piece. We wanted to hold the ceremony at a point in time where we have a high degree of confidence that we are fully running and producing material."

The Mount Milligan mine is a conventional truck-shovel open pit mine and designed to process 60,000 tonnes per day of copper concentrate. Average annual production over the 22-year mine life is estimated to be 81 million pounds of copper and 194,500 ounces of gold. The mine plan has been designed for extraction of higher grade and rich reserves in the early years. As a result, in the first six years of operations copper production is expected to average 89 million pounds per year and gold production is expected to average 262,000 ounces per year.

One of the most important benefits of the mine is the jobs that have been created.

"We started this in 2010 and spent $1.5 billion," said Loughrey. "Some of that was spent on purchasing equipment from far away places, but hundreds of millions of dollars has been spent in B.C. We had as many as 1,200 people at the property, with 80 per cent of our permanent workforce of 400 people (originating) from the central B.C. region.

"We have local suppliers and providers of goods and services and the mine is a very beneficial thing for the communities of Fort St. James, Vanderhoof, Prince George, Mackenzie and others."

The opening of Mount Milligan means a lot to Loughrey, who is now entering retirement.

"For me at Thompson Creek, this is a very positive thing," he said. "It's a culmination of a lot of hard work and a strategy we developed in 2008 to try and diversify Thompson Creek from solely relying on other projects as a source of revenue. I think it is a very healthy development for the company."

Thompson Creek has made it a priority to operate safely. So far in the Mount Milligan project there have been five million employee hours without a lost time incident, which Loughrey said is almost unheard of.

"We're also very responsible from an environmental standpoint," Loughrey said. "We've devised the facility as a non-discharge facility. No water leaves the property. We recapture it and use it again in the mill. We have numbers of people here, including First Nations, who help us look at the environmental aspects to make sure we're doing what we want to do there."

Loughrey said 400 jobs have been created, which he said has a tremendous trickle-down effect as money gets circulated through the community.

"The community will also attract people from far away and these people will bring their families here to attend schools and be active in the community," said Loughrey. "One of the things I like about working in the mining business is I like being involved in something that's creating wealth. We are improving the standard of life for people by taking something, supplying capital, labour and intelligence and making something where there was nothing before. We are creating something people want and need and it's a positive thing to be a part of."

As of September 30, 2013, the mill produced approximately 1,600 tonnes of saleable concentrate having a specification of approximately 24 per cent copper and 31 grams of gold per tonne. The average throughput rate has been 1,500 to 2,000 tonnes per hour.

Start-up of a second ball mill, along with its primary related flotation circuit, and a pebble crusher is expected to occur in October 2013. The full production design throughput rate for the mill is 60,000 tonnes per day.