Northern Sun Mining Corp. has temporarily suspended custom milling operations at its Redstone Mill in Timmins due to low ore inventory as a result of cessation of ore deliveries to the site.
Redstone processes ore from Wallbridge Mining Company’s Broken Hammer deposit in Sudbury. On March 28, Wallbridge announced it was temporarily pausing the operation of the open-pit mine due to mandatory load restrictions on access roads imposed by the municipalities of Sudbury and Timmins during the spring thaw.
It’s estimated the stoppage could last four to eight weeks, depending on weather conditions.
According to Wallbridge, under the original mine plan for Broken Hammer, mining would have been completed by the end of March. But since Wallbridge produced more tonnage than was estimated in the 2013 mineral reserve estimate, the Broken Hammer open-pit operation is expected to continue to the third quarter of 2015.
“We expect to resume operation after the municipal half-load restrictions are lifted and continue to mine the remainder of the deposit,” Wallbridge president and CEO Marz Kord said in a news release.
For the period from July 1, 2014 to April 2, 2015, Redstone processed approximately 190,000 tonnes of ore delivered by Wallbridge.
