Vale relaunches work on $1.7B Voisey’s Bay expansion

Vale has relaunched construction of its $1.7-billion Voisey’s Bay mine expansion project in Labrador, extending the life of the mine to 2034 and securing employment for 1,400 construction workers.

The expansion was originally approved by the Brazilian mining giant in 2015 with construction initiated in 2016, but market insecurity for its products — it extracts primarily nickel and also copper and cobalt from its site located 2,000 kilometres northeast of St. John’s — prompted a suspension in 2017.

Vale project director Joao Zanon explained an important factor in deciding to kickstart the project this June was an improvement in the market for the mine byproduct cobalt, used in batteries. The outlook for nickel, also used in batteries, as well as stainless steel and plating, is also positive, said a Vale Q2 2018 financial report.

“We produce one of most pure nickel properties in world and Vale wants to continue to be on the leading edge of the market,” he said recently. “To be able to keep that going for another 15 years is key for the company.”

Even with the formal suspension of the expansion, Zanon said, Vale’s operations staff onsite kept working preparing for the construction of two new ramps, at its Reid Brook and Eastern Deeps deposits, that will replace the open-pit mine now used.

And detailed engineering is now at the advanced stage. The original engineering plan for the expansion was prepared by Amec Foster Wheeler.

“The direction we got, we were not able to award new contracts but we continued with detailed engineering, we have over 15 engineers here in our St. John’s office, and part of the workforce from mining operations continued to do civil work outside,” Zanon said. “Operations moved over two million tons of material outside to open new work fronts that we are now using, so we got a little ahead of schedule.”

The expansion project is being overseen by Hatch, working with Sikumiut Environmental, an Indigenous-owned environmental company.

“They are doing project management, they are embedded in to our management team,” said Zanon. “We have Hatch personnel reporting to Vale personnel, Vale personnel reporting to Hatch. It is an integrated project team to deliver the project.”

The new-hires target for construction is said to be 650 workers but Zanon said that is just one shift of workers at the fly-in, fly-out operation, so in fact there will be a total of 1,400 construction workers active at peak.

Voisey’s Bay, discovered in 1993, was one of the biggest base metal finds in the world in the 1990s. Extraction began in 2005. A processing plant at nearby Long Harbour opened in 2014.

For the expansion, Vale will use the existing airstrip, concentrator, port and support facilities, develop underground access through the new ramps that will eventually extend 900 metres deep, install mine ventilation systems, increase power generation and fuel storage, expand accommodations, offices and maintenance shops, upgrade water and sewage treatment facilities, develop paste backfill and shotcrete plants and build new conveyor systems.

Zanon said the team aims to prefabricate as much of the structures as possible off site, with Canadians getting much of that work.

There are now 660 beds onsite being used by operations and construction crews, he said, and another 300 beds will be installed next year to deal with the peak of construction.

Vale will also implement new LTE communications and monitoring technology that will enable progress both in construction and operations to be followed in real time, meaning there will be no more end-of-day reports from workers in the field.

“We will have our own network pumped down to the mine so all equipment and people will be interconnected,” said Zanon. “It’s something we know is on the leading edge of the industry.”

Every worker will have to undergo training to become adept at using the system and will carry a smartphone, he said.

First extraction of ore from Reid Brook is expected in April 2021. Eastern Deeps will be operational by April 2022, at which time the open pit mine will cease operations.

The environmental approvals secured for the initial mine development and the benefits agreements reached with the Innu Nation and the Nunatsiavut government can be rolled over into the current expansion, Zanon said.

Approximately 80 per cent of the operations support contracts at the mine are with Indigenous businesses and 50 per cent of the operations workforce is Indigenous.

“We are using the same benefits agreements, they are key to our work there on the site,” Zanon explained. “It establishes how we are doing business on this project. All contracting of sources, any equipment and predescribed processes agreed with those groups, hiring or personnel, no matter who…they are first considered for hiring.”