British Columbia's Mount Polley Copper Will Restart This Spring

Hundreds of workers at the Mount Polley copper mine near Williams Lake in British Columbia are being recalled and new workers are being hired as the mine, buoyed by high copper prices, struggles to reopen in the spring.

Once Mount Polley is making money again, Imperial Metals may consider restarting its long-idle Huckleberry mine.

"Once we get it up and running, we'll look at Huckleberry, "Imperial Metals CEO Brian Kynoch told BIV News.

Mount Polley was closed in 2014 after a massive tailings pond collapsed. The company rebuilt the tailings ponds and spent more than C $70 million on environmental restoration.

The company restarted the mine in 2016, but closed it again in 2019 after copper prices fell below $3 a pound, which it needed at the time to make a profit at the mine.

It also put its Huckleberry copper mine near Houston, B.C., into upkeep and maintenance in 2016. Imperial Metals' only revenue since 2019 has come from its 30% share of the Red Chris mine.

Copper prices nearly fell below $2 a pound in March 2020 as the global coronavirus pandemic began. But by October 2020, it had breached $3 a pound, then topped $4 a pound in February 2021 and continued to rally sharply.

Copper is now trading at about $4.70 a pound. Some analysts are predicting that base metals, particularly copper and nickel, are in the midst of another supercycle, helped by a global economic recovery, a lack of investment in new copper mines and an energy transition that requires large quantities of copper for products such as electric cars.

About 100 workers have been working for months at the Springer mine in Mount Polley, first removing water and then pre-stripping waste rock to expose the ore body and prepare to restart the processing plant.

"Our goal is to start with 1 million tons of ore in stock, "Kynoch said.

He expects to restart the plant next month. By May or June, Kynoch expects the mine to employ about 350 people. Kynoch hopes most of the workers will come from local communities such as Williams Lake and Masible.

"We're really trying to hire locals, "Kynoch said. We're hoping to get a lot of the people who were there before us. I think we have to do some training and bring in some new people and train them."

The company continues to explore the area in an attempt to extend the life of the mine, which has only a few years of proven resources left.

在监管方面,帝国金属正在寻求an extension of its permit to drain water from its reconstructed tailings ponds. The water first settles, then is treated if necessary, and then drains into Lake Quesnel.

The original license, which was based on the mine continuing to operate until 2022, expires in December.

"It has that end date because if we continue direct mining, the mine will be closed (by the end of 2022), "Kynoch said. We had to close because the prices were so low. We still want to mine, so we want to extend the emission permits that we currently have.