Open, topical and informative, Brad Lantz recently gave a wide-ranging update on Hudbay’s northern Manitoba operations and plans.
Lantz, vice-president, Manitoba Business Unit for the company, was guest speaker at the new Snow Lake Chamber of Commerce’s recent inaugural dinner meeting.
Supplemented by a PowerPoint, Lantz familiarized attendees with his background before outlining HudBay operations and its history, goals and direction.
Addressing guests at the Diamond Willow Inn on Oct. 19, he said Hudbay is a fairly small company striving to become a mid-tier base metal producer.
“We want to work on the VMS (volcanogenic massive sulphide) properties,” Lantz said. “We want to stay geologically within the realm of what we understand.”
Lantz pointed out the positive aspects of partnering with smaller companies on some projects.
‘More holes’
“If it was up to Hudbay to find the next mine in this area, I would be concerned,” he said. “The more holes you get in the ground, the better off you are finding a deposit.”
Lantz discussed the role that Hudbay plays in the discovery of mines, touting its contribution toward the 26 mines the company has brought into production; while noting that the company has also turned 19 of those mines back to the environment.
Lantz spoke on the Reed mine outside Snow Lake, explaining that a lack of capacity at the Snow Lake concentrator is why Reed’s copper-rich ore will be processed in Flin Flon, which is further away.
He mentioned the $9-million upgrade to Snow Lake’s Stall Lake Mill and how it will bring that concentrator back to its originally designed capacity.
It is hoped capacity will be reached by the summer of 2014. Lantz said Hudbay won’t start building its Lalor concentrator until the second quarter of 2015.
Discussion at this point touched on the 777 mine, with Lantz confirming that the life of the flagship Flin Flon mine is eight years.
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He said this is something that conerns people in Flin Flon.
“We are doing underground exploration, but we haven’t found anything significant at the operation, and eight years isn’t that far off,” said Lantz. “The discovery of 777 to first ore (production) took 10 years. Lalor, after discovery, we put into production after five years. You can look at a mine taking anywhere from five to 10 years to bring into production after you’ve discovered it, so the idea right now is to find some new resources for Flin Flon.”
Talking further on exploration, Lantz called exploration “the core to how we are going to stay here and where we’re going to go with the future.”
He said even though the Flin Flon-Snow Lake Greenstone Belt is one of the most heavily explored in the nation, Hudbay still feels there is a good opportunity to find new mines.
Citing the Reed project as evidence of this, Lantz noted that this discovery had no visible outcrop of rock – the ore body was well hidden by a limestone cover.
“You could not have discovered that property if you didn’t have the geophysical capability,” he said.
Lantz also pointed to the Watts River deposit outside Snow Lake and the Hargrave sodium chlorate property in southern Manitoba were located with geophysics.
“As geophysical techniques improve over time, I suspect discoveries will continue,” he said.
Moving on to the Lalor mine, Lantz gave a pictorial tour of the property and an explanation of how ore movement will advance once the onsite Lalor concentrator opens.
“I think the positives for us around getting a new concentrator and having an ore body that can support a new concentrator is that it allows the ability to bring on other mines,” said Lantz. “Someone asked if we’d looked at (the) Bur (deposit near Snow Lake) lately. ...Operations like this (Lalor mill) will allow those types of things to happen.”
Lantz said Lalor’s life is 20-plus years.
“We haven’t found the bottom of Lalor – at 1,500 metres of depth we stopped drilling, but the ore body continues to plunge down dip,” he said. “We expect to do some deep drilling next summer to see where we’re at.”
Lantz said the strike length of Lalor is twice that of 777.
He mentioned how the company looks forward to being able to drill some of the deeper Lalor targets from exploration platforms underground, rather than the hit-and-miss nature of deep drilling from surface.
On the employment front, Lantz said Hudbay currently has 1,300 workers but it’s thought that figure will rise shortly.
Hit retirement
He showed a graph that illustrated the average age of workers. From it, one easily deduces that the company will have a good portion of its workforce hitting retirement age in the current and not so distant time periods.
Lantz noted that Hudbay’s workforce has to start getting younger and that the company is short on tradespeople.
He confirmed Hudbay is looking to increase its workforce at Lalor by 70 people next year.
“Where do we put 70 people if we are bringing them to the Town of Snow Lake?” Lantz asked rhetorically.
Lantz also addressed aboriginal issues.
“No question they have been front and centre here at times,” Lantz said, adding that the Minister’s Mining Advisory Council has been formed and met on the issue.
Lantz explained that this is a venue where government, companies and First Nations can discuss and potentially come to agreement on issues of common interest.
Lantz stressed how important it is to open and maintain relationships not only with First Nations, but also communities like Snow Lake and Flin Flon.
During his presentation, Lantz also touched on the progress the company and its workforce have made from a safety standpoint over the past number of years.
Attendance for the chamber’s inaugural dinner was disappointing; even the new group’s executive was missing a couple members.
The gathering began with a light meal prior to chamber president Morgan Cann welcoming attendees, giving an overview of chamber activities to date and then introducing Lantz.
This has been this week’s edition of My Take on Snow Lake, which runs Fridays.
Morgan Cann (left), president of the newly revived Snow Lake Chamber of Commerce, presents a certificate of appreciation to guest speaker Brad Lantz of Hudbay.
PHOTO BY MARC JACKSON
