Mining report: life after 75: Falconbridge set to dig deep.

Looking to Falconbridge's future means looking down - way down. As available reserves of nickel and copper begin to deplete, Falconbridge Ltd. continues exploration efforts to identify significant deposits that could see it through for at least two or three more decades to come, says Allen Hayward, vice-president of mining for the company's nickel business unit.

The trick is getting to it.

"For the last 30 years, we've been mining more ore than we've been discovering," Hayward says. "We were getting to the point where we were telling people, if we didn't find any new reserves, we wouldn't be around after 2008."

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Falconbridge in Sudbury.

In November 2001, however, a "significant" deposit was discovered on its Nickel Rim South property near the Greater Sudbury Airport prompting Falconbridge to plan an exploratory shaft to go down and explore it.

"It's down around 5,000 feet, so it really can't be explored from surface. We have to go down and explore it," says Hayward.

He adds the company is reluctant to quantify the deposits, in part because of greater regulatory restrictions on the claims mining companies can make that are, in part, the result of the Bre-X scandal in the late 1990s.

Another encouraging area is under Morgan Lake, discovered with surface drilling in 1999 that led to interesting results.

"We also have an active regional exploration program where we're looking for other ore bodies in the Sudbury basin," he says. "We have a significant property position here so we're spending in excess of $10 million per year on our regional program and have been for some time, looking for more Nickel Rim Souths.

"We've been drilling in the area for quite some time without too much encouragement, but in the last couple of years we've really turned a corner," says Hayward. "Now we've got our teeth in some projects that have the potential to extend the life of our operations here."

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Hayward says Falconbridge's operations in the Sudbury basin began back in 1928 and, over the years, many changes have taken place. Many of the mining sites carry the names of people who were prominent in the company - names like Craig and Lindsey. Sudbury makes up a significant part of Falconbridge's integrated nickel operation (INO), consisting of four underground nickel/copper mining operations, including the Craig, Fraser, Lindsey and Lockerby mines. The company anticipates the Lockerby deposit will be depleted by late 2004 or early 2005.

Over the years, employment in the mining sector has decreased significantly with the advent of underground mechanization and other innovations, a reason Hayward says the company continues to be able to do business.

"If you go back 30 years, we used to pay our miners about four dollars an hour and nickel was about three dollars a pound," he says. "Look at it today, we're paying our miners about $20 per hour and nickel is still only about four dollars a pound."

Technology will also be the key to the company's ability to extract ore from greater depths underground.

Past mines of 1,000 to 2,000 feet below the surface are, by today's standards, quite shallow, says Hayward. With the discovery of new resources even further below the 3,000-metre level, that creates a whole new set of technical challenges that have to be met before the company can extract them.

"We've had to develop ground support systems that have enabled us to do it safely," he says. "You get to that (sub-3,000 metre) depth, things like ground stress can be a problem. That's where you deal with issues such as rock bursts. We currently have some research and development projects that are looking at developing new systems that aren't currently available."

One such project, a spray-on polymer liner that replaces screen, is currently being developed with assistance from 3M and Sandvik Tamrock. Another project is to develop an alternative type of backfill. As mining goes deeper, and ore is removed, something has to go back in its place and deeper mining will require stronger, higher-quality materials to serve that purpose.

Continued technological and resource development requires a significant financial commitment by the company, up to hundreds of millions of dollars, he says.

"There's no reason to think this resource in Sudbury doesn't keep going down," he says. "The only problem is, the further down it goes, the more economically challenging it becomes because of the cost of building the operations, and you have to develop the technologies to handle the ground stress that you find down there."

A consortium of government and industry representatives is working together to develop that technology, says Hayward. That includes technology developed by Falconbridge that is now being tested in Inco's Creighton mine, currently the deepest mine in Sudbury.

"We're not trying to develop 'new weapons' that nobody else has," he says. "In this industry, mining technology is not thought of as secret. What we're talking about is safety of people."

By ANDREW WAREING

Northern Ontario Business