Snow Lake's newly formed Chamber of Commerce held their inaugural dinner meeting at 11:30 a.m. on Oct. 19 19th in the Diamond Willow Inn. Attendance was disappointing; even the new group's executive was missing a couple members. This was regrettable, as the guest speaker on this occasion was, Brad Lantz, vice-president of Manitoba business unit for Hudbay, and he was topical, open and informative.
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.
Supplemented by a PowerPoint presentation, Lantz first familiarized attendees with his background; then gave the group an outline of HudBay operations worldwide, as well as their history, goals and direction from a company perspective. He noted that Hudbay was a fairly small company striving to become a mid-tier base metal producer. "We want to work on the VMS properties. We want to stay geologically within the realm of what we understand," said Lantz noting mistakes in the past such as the Fenix ferro-nickel project in Guatemala.
However, he also pointed out the positive aspects of partnering up with smaller companies on some of their projects. "If it was up to Hudbay to find the next mine in this area, I would be concerned. The more holes you get in the ground, the better off you are finding a deposit," he said.
Lantz then took the group through a series of slides showing production peaks and valleys for the metals they produce based on projections for the 777, Constancia, Reed, and Lalor properties. Additionally, he touched on the progress the company and their workforce have made from a safety standpoint over the past number of years.
On the topic of exploration, Lantz discussed the part that HBED plays in the discovery of mines, touting their contribution towards the 26 mines Hudbay has brought into production, while noting that the company has by now also closed and remediated 19 of those mines, leaving seven as going concerns.
Lantz then got into the capacity of Snow Lake and Flin Flon's concentrators and explained that lack of local capacity was why Reed's copper rich ore will be processed in Flin Flon rather than Snow Lake, even though the latter's concentrator is closer. He mentioned the $9-million upgrade on the Stall Lake Mill and how it will bring that concentrator back to its originally designed capacity. It is hoped capacity will be reached by summer 2014. Lantz said that Hudbay won't start building their Lalor Concentrator until the second quarter of 2015.
Discussion at this point touched upon 777 Mine and Lantz confirmed that the life of the flagship Flin Flon mine is eight years. He said that this is something that people in Flin Flon are concerned with. "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 took 10 years. Lalor after discovery, we put into production after five years. You can look at a mine, taking anywhere from five to ten 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 stated, "Exploration is the core to how we are going to stay here and where we're going to go with the future." He said that even though the Flin Flon/Snow Lake Belt is one of the most heavily explored in the nation, the company still feels there is 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 orebody 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 and Hargrave discoveries as being located with geophysics. "As geophysical techniques improve over time, I suspect discoveries will continue," he opined.
Moving on to Lalor, Lantz gave the group a pictorial tour of the property and an explanation of how ore movement will advance once the onsite Lalor Concentrator is built and commissioned. "I think the positives for us around getting a new concentrator and having an orebody 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 Burr (The Burr Zone) lately operations like this (Lalor Mill) will allow those types of things to happen." Lantz says that Lalor's life is 20-plus years. "We haven't found the bottom of Lalor - at 1500 metres of depth we stopped drilling, but the orebody continues to plunge down dip. We expect to do some deep drilling next summer to see where we're at," Lantz said pointing out that the strike length of Lalor is twice that of 777. He mentioned how the company was looking 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.
Lantz revealed that Hudbay currently has 1,300 employees, but it's thought that figure will rise shortly. He also showed a graph that illustrated the average age of workers over a number of years. From it, one easily deduced that the company will have a good portion of their workforce hitting retirement age in the current and not so distant time periods. He noted that the company's workforce has got to start getting younger and that they are short on tradespeople, while confirming they are looking to increase their 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 center here at times," Lantz remarked, adding that a minister's mining advisory council has been formed and met on the issue. He explained that this is a venue and format where government, companies, and First Nations can discuss and potentially come to agreement on issues of common interest.
Prior to opening the floor to questions, Lantz noted how important it was to open and maintain relationships, not only with First Nations, but also communities like Snow Lake and Flin Flon. He then answered a number of questions from attendees on a myriad of subjects.
