PROFILE (October 14, 1991)

Whenever analysts or investors talk about silver, they think of Idaho-based Hecla Mining, which is celebrating its centenary this year. The company’s pride of place, the Lucky Friday mine near Mullan, Idaho, has been in production for more than three decades and is one of the lowest-cost primary silver producers in the U.S.

In the late 1970s, mine manager Arthur Brown, now Hecla’s president, helped to modernize Lucky Friday by recommending the construction of a circular concrete-lined shaft. “Most of the orebodies in the Coeur d’Alene mining district, where Lucky Friday is located, are associated with very high inherent rock stresses prone to rockbursting and severe ground movement,” Brown told The Northern Miner in a recent interview. Shafts in the district are largely of a rectangular timbered design and require considerable maintenance, he adds. In contrast, Hecla’s circular shaft has required little maintenance since it was commissioned in 1984.

Hecla’s meteoric rise to prominence occurred in 1980 when the price of silver soared from US$5.40 to US$50.35 per oz. At that time the company’s Lucky Friday and Star silver mines were operating at full capacity. “Within 18 months, Hecla had paid off all its debts, was investing in new properties and undertaking new exploration projects,” says Brown. (Its $51-million debt and more than $50-million negative shareholders’ equity were incurred largely from the Lakeshore copper project near Casa Grande, Ariz., which Hecla finally abandoned in 1978.)

Brown graduated from Witwatersrand Technical College in 1961 in South Africa, where he was born in 1940 and worked for years. He and his wife, Tiia, have three children. “In South Africa, circular concrete shafts are the norm under similar conditions that we encounter in the Coeur d’Alene district,” he says. In 1967 he joined Hecla and rose through the ranks to become president in 1986, and chief executive officer as well as chairman in 1987. He is the president of the Silver Institute and a director of the American Mining Congress.

In recent years, Hecla has tried to enhance its reputation as a gold and specialty metals producer. The Republic gold mine, 100% owned by Hecla, in northeast Washington state produces about 80,000 oz. gold annually. The company, however, failed to bring the Thor Lake beryllium project in the Northwest Territories into production because of a precipitous fall in prices. Although Hecla is involved in exploration programs in Canada, Brown says he takes a “wait and see” approach.

“The recent election in Ontario is a prime example of our concerns about the survival of true free market systems in Canada,” adds Brown. “We remember only too well what happened in British Columbia a few years ago when the socialists prevailed in that province.”