Three months and counting till Winston Lake start-up, Minnova

Minnova Inc. and 20% partner Zenmac Zinc have set Dec 15 as the target date for turning over the mill at the Winston Lake mine, 20 km northeast of here.

The mine site is alive with activity, The Northern Miner can report after a recent visit. More than ten different contracting and sub-contracting companies are jockeying for position on the site, which has been carved out of the wilderness north of Lake Superior in just 18 short months.

The mine and milling complex, designed to produce 330 tons of zinc and 30 tons of copper concentrates per day, should be in full production by the end of the first quarter of 1988, according to mine manager Tom A. Dickson.

Filtered concentrates will be trucked to Noranda Inc.’s zinc refinery in Valleyfield, Que. and the Horne smelter (copper) in Rouyn- Noranda, Que. (Noranda holds a 49.4% interest in Kerr Addison Mines, which in turn holds a 49.3% interest in Minnova.)

With reserves of 3.4 million tons grading 16% zinc, 1% copper, 0.96 oz silver and 0.03 oz gold per ton, the mine will have a minimum life of 10 years. Gold and silver values will report to the copper concentrate.

A particularly rich area of the orebody, grading as high as 27% zinc will be mined by cut and fill methods in the early going to help pay back the estimated $73 million the company is planning to spend on the project.

Mine contractor J.S. Redpath was responsible for sinking the 740-m shaft and completing some 2,500 m of lateral drifts and underground crosscuts. A 615-m ventilation raise, an ore and a waste pass was also driven by Redpath. This company’s crews left the property this week.

Twelve underground miners have been hired by Minnova so far and a total of 133 employees will be on site by the end of the year, according to John R. Smrke, superintendent of employee relations.

The underground mine is a beehive of activity. Mechanics and electricians are assembling mining equipment in underground garages; longhole drillers on contract from Boart Canada are drilling finger raises to connect ore and waste pass stations to the ore and waste pass syetem; diamond drillers on contract from Morissette are busy drilling from diamond drilling stations located at 12.5-m spacings along access drifts and the components of mine equipment are being slung into the mine for re-assembly.

On surface, contractors are assembling refurbished jaw and cone crushers and installing old and used grinding, flotation and filtering equipment in the newly constructed mill building.

And yet another contractor is constructing a major earth dam to retain mill tailings.

“We agree there is still a lot to do before we’re in production, but we think these targets are realistic,” Mr Dickson says. “Having everyone on site at once may look like a real nightmare but we’re confident everything will fall into place.”

Potential for extending the life of the mine exists both down dip from known reserves and at a seperate deposit, delineated at Pic Lake, about 1.5 km to the southwest.