Hudbay is aiming for mid-2016 to complete a review of its long-idle gold mill and other potential ways of fully capitalizing on its Lalor mine.
Earlier this year, Hudbay purchased the former New Britannia mine and gold mill in Snow Lake with an eye toward potentially refurbishing the mill to boost processing capacity.
Rob Winton, vice-president, Manitoba Business Unit for Hudbay, said the idle mill is a project that requires an investment case.
“New Britannia is part of a larger group of projects in the Snow Lake area that are being studied and engineered to maximize the potential of the Lalor mine,” he said.
Winton said Hudbay is now working toward a mid-2016 time frame to complete necessary trade-off studies “to allow all of our Snow Lake assets success.”
He added that no work has been completed at the New Britannia mill and that, as previously announced, Hudbay has no intention of mining at the site.
When Hudbay initially announced the purchase last April, Winton said the timing worked well given that mining plans at Lalor will see Hudbay access gold ore in future years.
“Having the capability to maximize gold recovery of these ores is the opportunity this purchase presents,” he said at the time.
The purchase gave Hudbay two Snow Lake area mills capable of serving Lalor: the Stall Lake concentrator and the New Britannia mill.
That raised questions around the company’s previously announced plan to build a new state-of-the-art mill at Lalor. Hudbay later confirmed that mill would not be built.
New Britannia’s previous owner, Toronto-based junior miner QMX Gold Corp., had hoped to restart the mine but instead used proceeds from the sale to focus on its Quebec assets.
New Britannia mine, originally known as the Nor-Acme mine, operated from 1949 to 1958 and again from 1995 to 2005.
