Sudbury

General Information

The Sudbury basin is located in central Ontario, Canada, about 400 km north of Toronto. KGHM owns a number of assets in which copper ore, nickel ore and precious metals are mined. The most important asset is McCreedy West underground mine, which is currently operating using the adit .

History

The first mining activity on the assets currently owned by KGHM in Sudbury began in the first half of the 19th century – mainly nickel ore mining.

At McCreedy West, exploration resulted in the discovery of a contact nickel deposit, the mining of which began in 2003. In the years 2005-2011 mining was conducted on the copper footwall deposit. Since 2011, the mine has been mining (with some interruptions) copper and precious metals deposit..

The Morrison deposit, rich in polymetallic ore with high-grade copper, nickel and precious metals were discovered in 2005. Mining production from this deposit started in 2008. In Q1 2019 the extraction of ore from the Morrison deposit was halted.

Production

Mining is carried out using mining techniques adapted to the geometry of the deposit. This is mainly a mechanised method of selective extraction with backfilling of successive levels from bottom to top and sub-level separation. In order to decrease depletion and increase the amount of ore in areas with thin veins, conventional back stoping of ore is applied. All of the ore extracted in the mine is processed by Vale’s Clarabelle plant in Sudbury.