Thanks to the opening of a new ore zone, Kirkland Lake Gold Inc. has more than doubled production and taken on 150 new miners.
Gold has been the brilliant element in these grey economic times and Kirkland Lake is not only discovering high grades, they are establishing high marks for it, taking home the 2008 Mining and Aggregates Safety and Health Association (MASHA) award for the best safety record.
About four years after discovering the South Mine Complex -- with an estimated 1.5 million ounces at three-quarter an ounce grade production began in March, said Mark Tessier, vice president of operations Kirkland Lake Gold Inc.
"At the same time we expanded production in the old part of the mine by bringing more stopes on line, and we switched from a five-day a week to a seven-day a week operation to make better utilization of our stopes and equipment," Tessier said.
"In doing all that we were able to move our production up from about 300,000 tonnes a day to over 600,000 tonnes a day and still climbing."
The growth is good news for the company, Tessier said, "and good news for this area.
"People were working here on a shoe string to get the exploration project done and it's starting to pay off," he said, explaining strong community support helped the gold mine project through the exploration years when it was unprofitable.
"And at a time when mining needs it, we are providing another 150 jobs," Tessier said.
On January 5, Kirkland Lake Gold Inc. began a hiring blitz, Tessier said. By the end of February almost all 150 new employees were hired.
"We had to do a lot of training, we also had to hire additional training staff to get people qualified, licensed to our equipment and oriented to our mine and methods," he said.
With lots of good miners in the labour market, Tessier said, explaining 1,200 people applied for 150 jobs.
"We were looking for people who could handle narrow vein type mining with small equipment," he said. "We got a good bunch of people and so far most of them are sticking."
The applications came from across the country, Tessier said, but about 85 per cent of the new employees came from within daily driving distance of the mine site just West of Kirkland Lake.
"The other 15 per cent came primarily from places like Sudbury and North Bay with a few from farther away."
The expansion will take Kirkland Lake Gold from being "an exploration project with some production to being a producer with a strong exploration project," Tessier said, explaining the plan is to get 100,000 tonnes out the mine next year.
"The guys are getting used to the place and doing a little better each month," he said. "I'm hopeful we can get our production rate somewhere to 700,000 tonnes per day and 100,000 ounces a year."
But the expansion doesn't stop there.
Kirkland Lake Gold is planning a new project to roughly double their production, Tessier said.
They are hoping to carry a production rate of 100,000 to 200,000-ounces per year for the next 18 months to two years, he said.
"And then hopefully start the next step of the expansion."
Kirkland Lake brought home their first Mining and Aggregates Safety and Health Association (MASHA) award in mid April for the lowest accident frequency for an underground mine in Ontario with fewer than 250 employees in 2008.
"For this mine, which is a small, hand-held, narrow vein type mine, very physical and labour intensive mines, for us to win that award is a real credit to the workers, the supervision, the health and safety committee and the management," Tessier said.
"The spirit of this mine is more intense than anywhere else I've worked."
In the past 10 years the loss time rate of injuries in mining overall have dropped by 50 per cent, said Ric deMeulles, president and general manager of MASHA.
"Kirkland Lake Gold has made a very heroic effort to reduce their injury rates in the past four to five years," he said.
www.kirklandlakegold.com
www.masha.on.ca
