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Jonathon Naylor Editor HudBay Minerals plans to beef up its northern Manitoba workforce in the coming years while "diminishing" its Flin Flon footprint, a company official said Tuesday. Tom Goodman, senior vice-president and chief operating officer for the HBMS parent, said the company's presence will be "growing in the Snow Lake area." "There will be growth of employment," Goodman told the Flin Flon and District Chamber of Commerce, later clarifying that he was referring to the company's northern Manitoba operations as a whole. "How we're going to build that growth of employment is through training and recruitment." During a question-and-answer session, Goodman was probed about HudBay's staffing plans for its highly anticipated Lalor Mine near Snow Lake. 'Up and down' He said Lalor workforce demands "will be up and down depending on where the project is at at any given point," but will likely total about 300 employees once the mine reaches full production. Asked where those workers will be found, Goodman said the plan is to "recruit and develop skills in order to meet that need." Addressing about 50 guests gathered at the City Hall Council Chambers, he noted that there will be a role for UCN's Northern Manitoba Mining Academy, set to open downtown later this year. "We would intend to work with the academics at UCN, and with the province, to bring along some training programs [for] entry-level mining positions and a development miner program," Goodman said. "[As for] the recruitment and development of tradesmen, we're really optimizing Ð maximizing is a better word Ð the number of apprenticeships that we're able to withstand in the operations. And we will be in the market of recruiting for people into Snow Lake." But will Flin Flon see any benefits of HudBay's augmented labour force? Goodman said he would expect some positive spinoffs because "what's good for northern Manitoba is also going to be good for Flin Flon." Referencing the planned closure of Trout Lake Mine, Goodman acknowledged the timing of Lalor "isn't perfect." While Trout Lake is due to close by the end of the year, or possibly early next year, Lalor will not enter early production until 2012 and won't be going full tilt until 2014. That said, Goodman observed that HudBay could "quite possibly" be operating a separate mine at Reed Lake, also near Snow Lake. HudBay CEO David Garofalo, who joined Goodman at the chamber meeting, said the best-case scenario would see the first ore extracted from Reed Lake in late 2012, though no production decision has been made. See 'HudBay...' on pg. 3 Continued from Pg. 1 Goodman said HudBay's plan is to operate Lalor with HBMS employees in accordance with its collective agreements. That statement quashed fears among some workers that the company would run the copper, zinc and gold mine with contractors. Transporting Goodman also clarified HudBay's plans for transporting zinc concentrate from Snow Lake. Although rail cars have been contemplated, the company intends to haul the concentrate by truck to the Flin Flon zinc plant. While HudBay plans to hire more people for its Snow Lake operations, it's not clear whether the new jobs will make up for the ones that have and will be eliminated due to the smelter closure and pending shutdown of Trout Lake. The smelter and Trout Lake at one point collectively employed about 450 people, not including contractors at the mine. That's far more than the roughly 300 staff Lalor is expected to require. Then again, HudBay could locate mines not even on the horizon at the moment. When the topic turned to the potential of the Flin Flon-Snow Lake region, or camp, Garofalo exuded optimism. "The technology's advanced quite dramatically," he said. "Most of this camp has only been drilled down to 100 or 200 metres below surface because a decade ago, geophysics only allowed us to trace anomalies down to 100 or 200 metres below surface. Now we can trace anomalies beyond 1,000 metres with the latest generation geophysics. So that's opened up another horizon for exploration that wasn't available to us a decade ago. So now we're really re-looking at the entire camp at depth." To that end, HudBay is dedicating more than half of its record 2011 exploration budget Ð $33 million of $59 million Ð to northern Manitoba. "Really, we haven't been constrained, by and large, by capital," Garofalo said. "During the Anglo years [when Anglo American owned HBMS], there was some constrain on capital for exploration, but by and large we've had capital available." Garofalo referenced the fact that HudBay/HBMS has discovered 26 mines in the region and called the companies' "strong workforce" a "significant competitive advantage." No 'new paradigm' Though base metal prices have reached impressive levels, the CEO stressed that the mineral sector has not "entered some new paradigm." "It's a cycle," he said, that at the moment is "very bullish" for metals. Garofalo shared his enthusiasm for HudBay's anticipated growth in gold production, both at Lalor and in Peru, calling the element "the one currency you can't break." "There's only one place for gold to go Ð it has to go up," he said. Since Garofalo took over as CEO last summer, HudBay's stock has soared to more than $17. While that's "not quite" where he'd like to see it, he pointed out that the shares were selling for $10 or $11 last July. Garofalo was the guest speaker at a special open-door meeting of the chamber.
