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.
As the crow flies, the Toronto head office of HudBay Minerals is precisely 2,034 kilometres away from Flin Flon. Yet most everything that happens there has some bearing on our community, even if it is not always immediately obvious. That was true of the HBMS parent company's ill-fated attempt to merge with another Toronto-based miner, Lundin Mining, in a deal that confounded many and impressed few. Firmly in the former category was Toronto merchant bank Jaguar Financial, a HudBay shareholder so ardently opposed that it initially wanted to take over the company and sell off its assets, most notably the Flin Flon operations. It came as a relief two weeks later when Jaguar backed away from the sell-off idea, for it was not at all clear who would buy those community-supporting assets and what that would mean for their future. Now the whole notion of HudBay taking over Lundin, an outfit with operations in Portugal, Sweden, Russia and other far-off lands, is, unsurprisingly, dead and buried. What does that mean for Flin Flon? John Hughes, an analyst with Desjardins Securities, told The Canadian Press he expects HudBay will now be "refocusing on existing producing and development assets." Since HudBay's only active mines are in Flin Flon, and since its most promising deposits are in the vicinity of Snow Lake, a realization of Hughes' prediction would be welcome. It would bode well both for current operations and for the future considering the massive mining opportunities Ð some big, some small Ð present in this region. It has long been evident that current HudBay CEO Allen Palmiere possesses a much more far-reaching vision for the company than did his predecessor, Peter Jones, who left the company 13 months ago. Mr. Jones' final quarters were spent talking up the tens of millions of dollars HudBay allotted for Northern Manitoba exploration under his watch. Mr. Palmiere, meanwhile, has seen opportunities Ð however logical or illogical depends on your view Ð all over the world. A recent Financial Post article summed up Mr. Palmiere's global vision well, labelling him a CEO who would "love to see a new Canadian mining champion emerge that can replace the Incos and Alcans of the past." But the big question, the article points out, "is whether that vision wins out in the end, or whether HudBay retreats to reliable old Flin Flon for another 80 years." From a community perspective, sticking with reliable old Flin Flon (and Snow Lake) sounds like a pretty favourable approach. It's worked well for this area and it's worked well for HBMS. With reports now indicating HudBay's present board is doomed, and with the ever-present possibility of a larger miner swallowing the company up, time will tell if this is the direction we will see taken. Local Angle runs Fridays.
