Nickel giant Inco (N-T) has announced that, as the site exploration program at the Voisey’s Bay nickel-copper-cobalt deposit and other claims in the Labrador area is complete, the company will close the camp at the end of September.
The closure will result in the elimination of 35 jobs. Fifteen employees of Voisey’s Bay Nickel (a wholly owned subsidiary of Inco) and 20 contract staff were given four weeks’ notice of redundancy.
A four-person security and maintenance team will remain.
"The closure of the exploration camp is a natural step in project development as no further work is required at this time to further define reserves or resources prior to the next stage in advancing the project," says Stewart Gendron, Voisey Bay Nickel’s president. "As such, closure is not linked with any of the ongoing, confidential negotiations with the provincial government, Innu Nation or the Labrador Inuit Association."
Inco inherited the project in August 1996 via its takeover of Diamond Fields Resources, who discovered the Voisey’s Bay nickel deposits in Labrador.
Exploration began soon thereafter. Since then, Inco has spent $100 million on drilling 555 holes and collecting over 350,000 metres of down-hole data.
The exploration program delineated 31 million tonnes of proven mineral reserves and significant resources.
Inco believes that the reserves and resources identified would be sufficient to support a mine and mill/concentrator on the scale of that contemplated for a commercial project for the Voisey’s Bay deposit.
Talks continue behind closed doors between the company and the Newfoundland government.
The government wants Inco to build a smelter-refinery complex or a hydrometallurgical plant to produce refined nickel metal on the island.
Inco’s insistence that the plant would have to meet the company’s economic criteria derailed the project’s development in mid-1998.
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