Falco greenlights Perseverance zinc mine in Quebec

In that same week that new head honcho Mick Davis and his Xstrata (XTA-L) executives dropped into the Toronto head office of their soon-to-be-acquired Falconbridge (FAL-T, FAL-N), the Canadian nickel miner announced that it was going ahead with a $145-million development of its Perseverance zinc mine in northwestern Quebec’s Matagami region.

While the cluster of small, high-grade massive-sulphide deposits at Perseverance have sat undeveloped for several years, Falco says the higher zinc price and provincial government’s support now make their mining economical.

The development announcement was made on Friday at an event attended by both the provincial premier Jean Charest and minister of natural resources and wildlife, Pierre Corbeil.

Falco says construction will last about two years, with the mine’s life estimated at roughly five years. The mine will employ some 250 people during the construction’s peak period and about 225 thereafter.

Zinc ore will be brought to surface via a ramp and trucked 6 km to a concentrator at Falconbridge’s former Lac Matagami mine facilities where, in anticipation of the Perseverance project start-up, the company retained the administrative offices and concentrator after the Bell-Allard mine’s closure in 2004.

From there, the annual production of 228,000 tonnes of zinc concentrate will be shipped and processed at the CEZinc refinery in Valleyfield, Que.

Perseverance hosts measured and indicated resources in three near-surface deposits totalling 5.1 million tonnes grading 15.8% zinc, 1.24% copper, 29 grams of silver per tonne and 0.38 gram of gold per tonne.

During what was a bleak period for the base metals industry, the Falconbridge exploration team won the 2001 Bill Dennis Prospector of the Year Award from the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada for discovering these deposits.

Falconbridge owns a 90% interest in Perseverance, with provincial government-owned Societe de Developpement de la Baie James holding the remainder.

The project’s deposits — named Perseverance, Equinox and Perseverance West — collectively represent the largest discoveries in the famous Matagami mining camp since the original Matagami Lake deposit was found in 1965.