THE FALCONBRIDGE STORY

Falconbridge came into being because of the vision of two great men. The first was Thomas Alva Edison, the well-known inventor. The second was less well known, outside of mining, and far more private.

He was Thayer Lindsley, a virtual recluse and geological genius whose waking hours (and they were long hours, often 16 or more a day) were completely devoted to geology, mining syndicates and anything else that might further his insatiable appetite for minefinding.

As the 1800s came to a close, Edison was turning out invention after invention with mechanical regularity. In 1875, he invented the mimeograph, in 1878 the phonograph. A year later his carbon filament light bulb (a Briton named Joseph Swan is co-inventor) signalled the beginning of the decline and eventual demise of the gas lamp. For an encore, Edison created the alkaline battery in 1900.

In 1901, Edison himself, a magnetic dip needle in hand, showed up in the Sudbury area. He was determined to locate a pure nickel deposit. Edison required the metal for the nickel electrode in his alkaline storage battery.

The dip needle responded over an anomaly in Falconbridge Twp., and Edison duly had a shaft sunk. He abandoned the project when quicksand inundated the opening. It is also said in Falconbridge: 60 Years 1928-1988 that Edison was in search of pure nickel. The deep-seated target was only ore, so there was little incentive for the inventor to carry on. Mine development was not in his strategic plan.

It was, however, in the plans of E.J. Longyear Co. of Minneapolis. In about 1915, it snapped up the lapsed Edison claims, drilled the rich nickel-copper deposit and patented the claims. Longyear had drilled off 5.1 million tonnes above the 150-metre level along a strike of 2,100 metres. The unfortunate Edison had halted his shaft-sinking only 4.5 metres above the top of the orebody, according to Gerald Crawford who presented a historical perspective on Falconbridge for the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy in 1989. Edison’s luck was even worse than he would ever know. Had he sunk his shaft only 60 or more metres away from the original spot, he would have hit bedrock with his 25-metre shaft.

In 1928, Lindsley, who was to become one of the greatest minefinders in Canada, and J. Gordon Hardy, a Scottish engineer, bought the Falconbridge claims for $2.5 million, or approximately 50 cents per ton. But having a nickel-copper orebody was one thing. Inco had the facilities and held the world patents to the only existing nickel refining technology, both the Orford and Hybinette processes. And yet without a refinery, the Falconbridge ore was next to useless as far as the fledlging Falconbridge was concerned.

Lindsley, however, knew of a struggling nickel refinery on the southern tip of Norway that relied on the Hybinette process. He bought the refinery. The third piece of the puzzle, a smelter, was also cunningly acquired. Lindsley hired away from Inco’s Coniston smelter near Sudbury several of the plant’s key operations people. They helped build the Falconbridge blast furnaces.

Today, Falconbridge, owned by Noranda Inc. and Trelleborg AB of Sweden, is a metals empire, reporting $2 billion in revenues in 1990. That year, it sold 56,300 tonnes of nickel, 29,600 tonnes of ferronickel (from its operation in the Dominican Republic), 188,300 tonnes of copper, 124,300 tonnes of zinc and an additional 105,200 tonnes of zinc concentrate. In this special issue, we key on the Kidd Creek mine and metallurgical site in Timmins, Ont.; and, of course, where it all began, the Sudbury mines, mill and smelter.

As well, there is information on some of the key people in the Falconbridge organization, a geological report from Kidd Creek, and an examination of some of the company’s recent initiatives in environmental protection. Also featured is Falconbridge Gold, a growing precious-metal subsidiary operating a gold mine near Timmins, and a raft of exploration projects that some day may become mines.

As you can see, the focus of our coverage is on Canada. But it shouldn’t be forgotten that Falconbridge, with its refinery in Kristiansand, Norway, and huge ferronickel mine and smelter in the Dominican Republic, is truly international.