Sudbury's Magna Mining has made the full transformation from exploration outfit to mining player.
April to June was the first quarter of production from Magna’s new anchor asset, the McCreedy West copper mine, since officially taking the reins from KGHM last February.
Located on the Sudbury basin's north range, the company is in ramp-up mode to get McCreedy West humming and operating the Magna way. Magna execs said they're setting up shop in anticipation of bigger and better things to come in 2026.
McCreedy West was acquired from Polish miner KGHM, along with a stable of other past-producing mines — such as the shuttered Levack, Podolsky and Kirkwood mines — and some lesser known exploration properties in a deal first announced in September 2023.
McCreedy West is their only revenue-generating asset. But Magna has lofty goals to become a multi-mine producer in Sudbury over the next three years.
It’s been a swift ascent for the company, steered by many former employees of FNX Mining, an upstart company that achieved great success in the basin in the early 2000s by reviving some past-producing mines. The formula is the same with Magna. The ground they've acquired is familiar turf to many on staff.
Magna CEO Jason Jessup was once mine manager at McCreedy West and many of his colleagues worked and are intimately familiar with their portfolio of properties.
During Magna’s second quarter, McCreedy West produced 3.05 million pounds of copper at an average grade of 3.26 per cent copper equivalent. The cash balance at the end of the period was $27 million. Vale’s Clarabelle Mill in Sudbury is handling all their ore processing.
In assessing their first half performance in during an Aug. 28 webcall with mining analysts, Jessup said he's was "quite pleased" with the improvements made at McCreedy with investments in new equipment and a steadily growing workforce.
Jessup said the key to unlocking McCreedy West’s potential is carrying out some overdue underground development. That will be their focus for the remainder of this year.
With plenty of untapped resources to mine, Magna believes McCreedy West can be a long-lasting and cash-generating producer of copper, nickel and platinum group metals.
Jessup has previously said the strategy is to get four to six months ahead on underground development to open up multiple stopes to provide more flexibility in their mine plan.
Magna reportedly has made great strides in boosting the development rate from seven feet a day in March to an average of 17 feet by June. And there’s been month-by-month improvement in copper production with better grades.
The shift into assembling its own in-house development team, instead of relying on contractors, should lower costs.
The goal is to put McCreedy West in such a strong and profitable position in 2026 to fund the restart of the Levack mine next door. Magna has hopes Levack will be the next mine in the queue. Levack was mined until 2019.
This summer, Magna has been releasing a steady flow of Levack drill assays showing some high and crazy high-grade results from an unexplored area that appears to show a new footwall deposit of copper with some decent nickel, PGM and gold values in the mix.
A new mineral resource estimate for Levack comes out later this year with Magna angling for a 2026 restart.
“Levack is a priority project for our company and will continue to be a significant portion of our exploration budget,” said Jessup.
On the northeast corner of the basin, Magna’s Podolsky mine remains on care and maintenance with plans being devised to take an underground bulk sample from the deposit there.
On the basin's southwest corner at Crean Hill, the former INCO mine acquisition where Magna made its big splash in 2022, the revival of that mine has been pushed lower in the development batting order.
Magna said some advanced engineering work is happening to finalize a mine design along with purchasing a permanent dewatering system, but no exploration work is taking place. Levack is currently occupying their exploration focus.
