The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor David Garofalo ruled out a new copper smelter for Flin Flon but said he is pushing for a gold refinery in Snow Lake as the HudBay CEO fielded a range of questions last week. After announcing that all entities within HudBay Minerals will now be known simply as HudBay, he took queries from workers and civic leaders while on stage at the R.H. Channing Auditorium. MLA Clarence Pettersen, among upwards of 500 guests cramming the auditorium, asked whether new mineral discoveries have prompted talk of a copper smelting revival in Flin Flon. 'I'll be quite frank. I've been frank about this in the past. Land-locked smelters are very difficult economic propositions,' replied Garofalo. 'The most profitable smelters in the world are generally located near water, so they have access to multiple sources of copper concentrates. So it just wasn't economic for us to retrofit the smelting business that we had here.' 'Decision' While Garofalo was not with HudBay when it decided to close its copper smelter in June 2010, he called it 'the right business decision.' 'Rather than bleed profits _ which affects all of us and all our compensation _ through that smelting business, we decided to shut that down and really focus on the priority side of our business,' he said. See 'Gar...' on pg. 6 Continued from pg. 1 Garofalo was also asked whether HudBay is contemplating a gold refinery in Snow Lake given the promising amounts of the element at the Lalor mine now under development. 'It's something we're considering, actually,' he said, adding the present design for the new Snow Lake mill does not envisage a gold plant. Garofalo said he would like to see a gold plant at some point, and is pushing for such a project, but the decision will ultimately be driven by geology. Asked whether the Flin Flon zinc plant, presently operating below capacity, is at risk of closure, Garofalo said the facility faces short-term challenges. 'The zinc facility is much more modern than our copper smelter was, though we remain challenged in terms of trying to get additional zinc concentrate to fill out the (facility),' he said. 'But once Lalor's up and running, at least over those initial years, we'll have more than sufficient zinc concentrate to fill that refinery. 'I won't deceive you. In the short-term, the next two or three years, we're going to be challenged to get enough feed for that (facility), because we don't have enough here locally, organically. We need to go and look for it elsewhere. But again our challenge here is that we're land-locked and we're not high on the list for a lot of miners to move their zinc concentrate to, so we need to generate more zinc concentrate production.' Housing shortage On the housing shortage and anticipated growth in Snow Lake, Garofalo said HudBay is 'trying to let the private sector take care of it' but is also helping fund town infrastructure such as a new sewage treatment plant and upgrades to the community centre. 'It's not a quick fix, unfortunately, because Snow Lake has been in decline for many, many years in terms of population and we're going to be reversing that quite dramatically in a very short period of time,' he said. Another politician in the audience, Colleen McKee of city council, asked whether Garofalo would be open to discussions for community improvements within Flin Flon. 'I think those discussions have never stopped,' replied the CEO. 'We had the (80th) Anniversary Fund (worth $1 million) that's been sending cheques towards community initiatives....so it's never stopped and never will stop in terms of our community-building here in Flin Flon.' Talk shifted to the environment with a query from the audience of whether HudBay 'is ever going to do anything' to clean up its growing tailings pond near Creighton. 'Well, you know what, that guarantees employment,' said Garofalo. 'If we don't have somewhere to put our waste, we won't have a mine. So I would expect our tailings facility will be there for quite a long time because I hope we find more (mines).' Safety concerns may have prompted a question on whether HudBay had looked at using rail instead of highways to transport ore from Snow Lake to Flin Flon in the coming years. Garofalo said the existing rail line 'has fallen into disuse' and unless rail companies invest in upgrades, that is not a feasible option. On the issue of how gold production will impact the company and employee profit sharing, Garofalo simply said 'mining is mining.' 'It really doesn't affect how we mine. We're just going to mine as efficiently as we can our deposits,' he said. 'The one thing that's interesting about gold companies, for whatever reason...(they) tend to get more full evaluation in the marketplace, perhaps because gold is perceived more as a currency than a commodity. So an opportunity for us is to try and unlock that value, unlock that secure evaluation of the marketplace.' 'Various options' Asked about HudBay's aging main offices in Flin Flon, Garofalo said the company is 'studying various options for rebuilding.' The aging offices are one challenge HudBay faces, but a much more urgent hurdle relates to what Garofalo called an 'industry-wide, global' shortage of skilled tradespeople and professionals. 'There's a significant shortage of skilled trades, professionals _ geologists, metallurgists, engineers and the like,' he said. Garofalo said the company will do all it can to attract the workers it needs, mentioning its long history of high school scholarships and its contribution to the Northern Manitoba Mining Academy and a similar program in Peru. He praised the company's geological expertise and said he hopes to find HudBay's next viable ore deposit in Flin Flon.
