A new mine shaft at the Bell Creek Mining Complex will help keep productivity up and costs down.

The expanded shaft officially opened on Tuesday at the Tahoe Canada Mine in Timmins. A crowd of people were gathered to see the nontraditional ribbon cutting for the mine shaft, which involved the ribbon being cut by the cage travelling up the shaft. Speeches commending the Bell Creek crew were given by Sault Ste. Marie MPP Ross Romano, Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus, Timmins MPP Gilles Bisson, and Mayor George Pirie.

The expanded mine shaft is the result of two years of work and just over $100 million. The production shaft is now 1080 meters deep and allows crews to travel that far down without trucks.

“That creates a whole new environment for us here at Bell Creek,” said Peter Van Alphen, VP of Operations at Tahoe Canada. “Productivity will go up, costs will come down and we can increase our production rate here. And so we’re on track to do that, doubling the production of what we historically produced here as Lakeshore Gold, which was 40,000 ounces a year. We’ll now be targeting 80,000 ounces a year from the Bell Creek Operations.”

The old shaft process had plenty of challenges that delayed production and affected costs for the Bell Creek mine site.

“If you’re going down,” said Alphen, “you’re trying to haul 4 or 5,000 tonnes of rock and you’re doing it from as deep as 1,200 meters underground. That’s coming up the spiral ramp, so that’s 8 kilometers of hauling to get to surface. And the ventilation challenge of that, the equipment challenge of that, it just becomes extremely difficult.”

Alphen says productivity was a challenge because it would take an hour to get to the bottom of the mine. By having the expanded shaft, crew can now travel 1000 meters in four minutes in the cage. This not only helps with production and costs, but also with the mines sustainability.

“We have to improve on our costs all the time,” Alphen said, “and what this does is it takes a significant portion of our costs in trucking and productivity and it reduces that. And so that helps us become more and more sustainable into the future.”

Personnel have been travelling down the shaft and using the cage since December, and there have already been some big gains in efficiencies.

“It allows people to get to work sooner,” said David Bernier, Manager of the Bell Creek Complex, “and it allows us to remove trucks from the underground and increase our capacity.”

Bernier says they have always been constrained with the amount of material crews can move. Now that the shaft is open, more can be done in less time.

“The bottleneck before was the trucking of the material,” he said. “The shaft takes that away. So now we’re going to be looking at options going forward to increase the production even further.”

Alphen says the shaft has the potential of going down to at least 2,000 meters deep. He says crews are actively drilling and looking at deepening the deposit.

The Bell Creek mine site is at full production numbers now with 200 crew members at the Bell Creek site and 670 in the camp as a whole. This project saw more crew members being hired to help with the expansion, and they’ve since been assimilated into the work force.

The expansion has several milestone achievements attached to its completion, including a triple zero safety record.

For Bernier, there is a lot to be proud of.

“I was proud of the entire mine to be quite honest,” he said, “and the team. It was good to be able to put the team out in front of everybody. […] And not only was it a challenge to build a project while you’re mining, we did that and we’ve been able to increase our production and increase our safety performance over that time. So that was something I was most proud of.”

The target for 2018 at Bell Creek was 62,000 ounces extracted. Crews actually surpassed that and obtained 70,000.  They are targeting 80,000 for 2019.

The mine life for Bell Creek is 2025, but Alphen says that’s not set in stone.

“There’s always more gold beneath your feet,” he said, “always. And we’ll continue to look for it and find it.”

Alphen says the Timmins community has been supportive and embracing of the mining complex over the years.

“Timmins is a mining community,” he said. “You know, we put a lot of trucks down through the main road of Timmins. We do that every day, we all interact with them when we drive to and from in our daily lives. And Timmins has embraced us well.”

 

 

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