May 13, 2015 – Republic of Mining

UPDATE 3-S.Africa’s AMCU union wants gold mining firms to double minimum pay – by Zandi Shabalala (Reuters India – May 13, 2015)

May 13, 2015

http://in.reuters.com/

JOHANNESBURG, May 13 (Reuters) – South Africa’s Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) wants the basic pay for entry level workers in the gold mining industry to be more than doubled, setting the stage for tough pay talks at a time when companies are complaining of dwindling profits.

Joseph Mathunjwa told reporters on Wednesday his union, which led a record five-month long strike in the platinum industry last year, would seek a monthly wage of 12,500 rand ($1,045) for workers who currently earn around 6,000 rand.

“The mineworkers are enslaved across the country. Whatever we put forward is to liberate the mining workers from this oppression,” Mathunjwa said.

However, Africa’s top bullion producers AngloGold Ashanti , Sibanye Gold Harmony Gold and Pan African Resource’s Evander Mines say that high pay increases would lead to the decline of a struggling industry.

A spokeswoman for the gold mining companies said the firms would consider job security and the sustainability of the industry in wage talks.

Bathurst Mining Camp construction moves forward in New Brunswick – by DCN NEWS SERVICES (Daily Commerical News – May 13, 2015)

May 13, 2015

http://dailycommercialnews.com/

BATHURST, N.B.—A Vancouver-based company is moving forward with construction and re-start activities at its mine and mill complex located in the Bathurst Mining Camp of northeastern New Brunswick.

“As we are about to begin production at our Caribou Mine here in the Bathurst Mining Camp, we are very appreciative of the support for the new fiber-optic data and communications infrastructure,” said Mark Cruise, president and CEO of Trevali Mining Corp.

“The initiative allowed us to maintain our operational schedule for the mine where about 300 people are currently employed.”

Trevali is a zinc-focused, base metals mining company, which owns the Caribou mine and mill, the Halfmile mine and Stratmat deposit all located in the Bathurst Mining Camp.

The company is currently advancing its 3,000 tonne per day Caribou mill complex and mine, which is located 45 kilometres (km) west of Bathurst, in Restigouche County.

Canadian mining company spied on opponents and activists in Brazil – by Heriberto Araújo and Anna Veciana (The Guardian – May 13, 2015)

May 13, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/international

Mining company Kinross’s ambitions to create most productive gold mine in Brazil plagued by health risks and threats to activists and opponents

Paracatu, Brazil – Despite her advanced age, Juliana Morais da Costa still retains enough strength in her hands to hold the heavy bateia. “I began to pan gold when I was five. We started at 5am until 4pm. It was tough work, but I did it because it was the only way to be economically independent,” remembers Morais, 86.

Her home city of Paracatu is the epicentre of Brazil’s mining production, in the north of the state of Minas Gerais, which generates almost one-third of Brazil’s total mining production.

The exploitation of gold started in Paracatu as early as 1722. But the days of the garimpeiros, or gold hunters, are long gone. Since the 1990s the hunt has moved from the river banks to underground deposits. Dynamite, excavators and chemicals replaced the garimpeiros, who were pushed out from a business that had sustained hundreds of families.

In 2005, Canadian company Kinross – which is listed in the New York Stock Exchange and owns gold mines in Chile, United States, Russia and Ghana, among other countries – took over the mining concession in Paracatu.

Shell given okay to resume controversial Arctic drilling – by Paul Koring, Jeffrey Jones and Jeff Lewis (Globe and Mail – May 12, 2015)

May 13, 2015

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

WASHINGTON and CALGARY — In a move that buoyed big oil but enraged environmentalists, the Obama administration has given the green light for Royal Dutch Shell to resume offshore drilling in the remote Arctic waters, off Alaska’s northwestern coast.

Monday’s decision, which is conditional on Shell’s getting approval for remaining drilling permits for the project, is a major win for Shell and other petroleum companies, which have sought for years to drill in the harsh waters of the Chukchi Sea, which is believed to hold vast reserves of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas.

Shell’s Arctic drilling program and the Keystone XL pipeline to funnel Canadian oil sands crude across the United States have been the top two targets for environmental groups seeking to hold U.S. President Barack Obama to his pledge to cut greenhouse-gas emissions causing climate change. Although Mr. Obama has pursued an ambitious environmental agenda, he has also tried to balance that by opening up untouched federal water to new exploration.

Engineering firm focuses on tailings, backfill management – by Jonathan Migneault (Northern Ontario Business – May 12, 2015)

May 13, 2015

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North.

To the untrained eye, a visit to Kovit Engineering’s lab in Sudbury looks like a number of adults playing with combinations of sand, silt and water.

On the surface, the lab might have a lot in common with a child’rens playground, and the wide-eyed experimentation that comes with getting one’s hands dirty.

But to Frank Palkovits, one of Kovit Engineering’s four co-owners, what goes on in the 3,500-square-foot laboratory is serious business. Kovit Engineering consults with mines around the world to help them manage their on-surface tailings and backfill.

The company specializes in what it calls “paste technology,” first developed by Inco in Sudbury, and later perfected by Golder Paste Technology in the mid-1990s.

Palkovits worked for both companies, and in June 2011 teamed up with Paul Rantala, Steve Reichle and Mark Wallgren to found Kovit Engineering.

Glencore, Barrick Gold Looking to Sell Tanzania Nickel Project – by Alistair MacDonald and Scott Patterson (Wall Street Journal – May 13, 2015)

May 13, 2015

http://www.wsj.com/

While Kabanga’s ore is of a high grade, a sale may be difficult given the size of the field of potential buyers

Mining giants Glencore PLC and Barrick Gold Corp. are looking to sell a joint nickel development project in Tanzania, according to people familiar with the matter, in a sales process that may struggle amid volatility in the pricing of this metal.

The two mining giants each own half of the Kabanga nickel project in northwest Tanzania and have been touting the property for several months, according to the people familiar with the matter. Neither company has hired a bank to sell the property, according to two of these people.

The asset is one of many that have been put up for sale in recent years as miners rejig their portfolios and raise money to mend battered balance sheets.

Glencore Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg has repeatedly said he is focused on purchasing developed mines and that he isn’t interested in so-called greenfield projects, which require hefty cash outlays.

A mug full of diamonds: A reporter’s notebook from the Victor mine – by Rita Celli (CBC News Business – May 13, 2015)

November 3, 2015May 13, 2015

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business

Only way to get to Ontario’s only diamond mine, 1,100 km due north of Toronto, is by plane

“It’s one of the most beautiful places up here. You can see rock islands. You can see moose,” says Terry Ternes, environmental manager at Ontario’s only diamond mine, located in the James Bay lowlands.

“The Attawapiskat River is gorgeous in the summer ime. Just majestic,” Ternes adds. We’re overlooking the water, at the company’s treatment plant, and the view is breathtaking, even with the snow falling and a bitter whipping wind.

Ternes is in charge of reclaiming the land when the De Beers mine closes in four years. His work includes collecting seeds and cones from area trees to replant. His team is also tracking caribou that migrate around the region.

“I’m a farm boy from Saskatchewan. I farm. This is no different,” Ternes says. “When we leave here, this land is going to be in the same shape as we found it.” Ontario environmental commissioner Gord Miller says De Beers has the best data on caribou in Northern Ontario. The company has been monitoring the herds for several years and is providing good baseline biological data.

Mining towns in Ontario feel shortchanged on resource riches – by Rita Celli (CBC News Business – May 13, 2015)

May 13, 2015May 13, 2015

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business

For Rita Celli’s CBC Radio program on “Ontario’s mining take: Should the Auditor General investigate?” click here: http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/Ontario/Ontario+Today/ID/2667143028/

Province gets mining tax, while northern towns get potholes and a shrinking share of property taxes

Ontario mining towns with rich gold and nickel deposits sit on billions in resources, but they feel poor and ignored.

“You get to a point you’re frustrated. You can only go to the well so often,” says Red Lake Mayor Phil Vinet. “The last couple of times I just felt like I was farting against thunder.”

The northern leaders often appear to be stuck in a perpetual fight to squeeze more money and basic information from mining companies and the provincial government.

Red Lake is built on gold. During the gold rush in 1936, Red Lake claims to have had the busiest airport in the world, surpassing Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Paris, London and Toronto. Except there was no airport — planes landed on the lake in summer and on ice in the winter. The biggest mine is operated today by Goldcorp. The owners have changed over the years, but the same mine is still giving up gold after decades.

Anglo Should Exit Iron Ore for its Shareholders, Investec Says – by Firat Kayakiran (Bloomberg News – May 12, 2015)

May 13, 2015

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Anglo American Plc should sell its iron-ore assets and focus on diamond and platinum operations for the benefit of its shareholders, according to Investec Plc. The producer of minerals from Australia to Brazil could raise as much as $4.66 billion selling assets in South Africa and Brazil, analysts Marc Elliott and Hunter Hillcoat said.

“A disposal of the entire iron ore portfolio would be a game changing transaction, strengthening the balance sheet, reducing the risk profile of the group and potentially enabling a substantial re-rating,” the analysts said in a note.

Iron-ore prices reached a decade low of $47 a metric ton on April 2 before rebounding to $59. Investec forecasts prices will average $55 a ton this year before rising to $80 a ton by 2019.

Anglo, which owns about 70 percent of Kumba Iron Ore Ltd., Africa’s largest producer of the steel-making raw material, in October began shipments from its Minas-Rio mine in Brazil as prices slid after the largest producers including BHP Billiton Ltd. expanded capacity amid slowing demand from China.

How Canada’s Heritage Minutes got their swagger back – by Josh O’Kane (Globe and Mail – May 13, 2015)

May 13, 2015May 13, 2015

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

To date, not one Heritage Minute video, highlights Canada’s vibrant mining history. – Stan Sudol, Owner/Editor RepublicOfMining.com.

https://www.historicacanada.ca/content/heritage-minutes/agnes-macphail

In the beginning, there was Valour Road, Jacques Plante and the Underground Railroad. Then Nellie McClung, Superman and the Halifax Explosion. Soon, dozens more. By 1995, four years after their launch, Heritage Minutes were a Canadian institution: 60-second snapshots of cultural history thrust into TV screens from coast to coast to coast, injecting education into entertainment.

But then they fizzled, trickling out in fewer numbers. For a long time, there were no new vignettes at all. Then, in 2012, the staff at Historica Canada, the Minutes’ chief steward, had an idea as simple as cutting a hole in basketball’s first baskets – their bite-size history lessons were a perfect fit for the high-speed, high-nostalgia digital age.

So Historica made the first new pair in seven years. Then another pair. And another. They launched them in public, to more and more people each time – at an art deco theatre, the Hockey Hall of Fame, a Winnipeg Jets game. Then, in March, they dropped a mashup of 53 Heritage Minutes to recreate Drake’s Started from the Bottom. It got more than 100,000 YouTube views in 48 hours.

[Ontario Northland] Corina Moore, you are ignoring history – by Thomas Blampied (Thomas Blampied’s Railway World – May 9, 2015)

May 13, 2015

http://thomasblampied.blogspot.ca/

This past week saw the interim president of the ONTC, Corina Moore, spoke at the FONOM meeting in Sudbury. Unfortunately, her comments were not helpful and have alienated workers at the 113-year-old transportation commission.

As reported by CBC, Moore explained that the Commission was in a “crisis situation”. I couldn’t agree more. As my research into the ONTC showed, it has been losing money for the past few decades as inadequate subsidies and the precarious economic and demographic situation in the north made for a difficult market to operate in.

However, Moore went a step further, saying that the ONTC needed a “culture shift” away from “entitlement” and towards a more competitive framework. This reflects previous statements she made regarding the need for a more competitive organization, but also suggests that the ONTC has been some sort of spoilt child. I disagree, my experience with the ONTC showed hard-working people who provided essential services connecting, not only northeastern Ontario, but also the north to the south.

My real issue, however, is a comment that the CBC reports Moore made to the effect that “the future will be challenging because the company hasn’t seen much change in 113 years.”

Chinese iron ore mines face ‘annihilation’ as BHP, Rio Tinto, Vale boost output – by Jasmine Ng, Feiwen Rong and Jesse Riseborough (Sydney Morning Herald – May 13, 2015)

May 13, 2015

http://www.smh.com.au/

Iron ore production in China is poised to shrink further as cheaper imports and faltering demand threaten to close mines supplying mills in the top steelmaker. Most private mines in China have costs that are too high and produce ore of too low a quality to survive, according to Sanford C Bernstein & Co. Output that fell 20 per cent to 311 million metric tons last year would drop to 271 million tons this year and shrink further next year, Goldman Sachs said.

Iron ore retreated 39 per cent over the past 12 months as Australia’s Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton as well as Brazil’s Vale SA boosted low-cost production to cut costs and protect market share, spurring a glut as China slowed. The outlook for supply, and consequences for miners in China, will be in focus on Thursday as executives from the biggest producers address a conference in Singapore. BHP chief executive officer Andrew Mackenzie warned on Tuesday that lower prices were here to stay.

Georgi Slavov, head of basic resources research at Marex Spectron Group, said in an email: “Mines not part of larger cash or credit line-rich steel groups are facing annihilation. Utilization in China keeps dropping, which means more and more mines are struggling to meet the ends and produce.”

Mining Companies in Philippines Face Many Travails – by Trefor Moss (Wall Street Journal – May 12, 2015)

May 13, 2015

http://www.wsj.com/

Red tape, opposition from indigenous people mar efforts to fulfill country’s mining potential

MINDORO, The Philippines—The island’s name means “gold mine” in Spanish, but it was nickel that was ultimately found in the mountains of Mindoro two decades ago.

Since then, like so many Philippine mining ventures, the proposed Mindoro Nickel project roughly 100 miles south of Manila has struggled to break ground because of onerous red tape and opposition from the indigenous people who inhabit these remote highlands.

Intex Resources ASA, the Norwegian company licensed to mine the nickel, secured a key environmental permit last month, clearing one of many regulatory hurdles, but still faces the uphill task of persuading the local Mangyan tribe to endorse the project.

“We want things to stay as they are,” said Lonito Dasa, a community leader. “We don’t want mining to threaten our way of life.” Indigenous peoples like the Mangyan have special rights under Philippine law that would make it hard for a project like Mindoro to go ahead without their approval.

Ontario mining safety review prioritizing proposals (CBC News Sudbury – May 13, 2015)

May 13, 2015

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury

After the fanfare of putting out mining safety proposals, they get shortlisted for action

Some members of the Mining Health, Safety and Prevention Review are pushing ahead to turn safety recommendations into legislation. The chair of the committee, George Gritziotis is also the province’s Chief Prevention Officer.

He said he will soon be meeting with an advisory group which is prioritizing proposals from the review, as well as a recent inquest in Sudbury. Gritziotis said the 24 recommendations from the inquest into the deaths of Jordan Fram and Jason Chenier at Stobie Mine in Sudbury overlap, or dovetail, with the 18 from the review.

“You know there are recommendations in there that speak to hazards that are present in the workplace today that we want to move on right away,” he said.

“Following our May meeting, we will begin prioritizing which ones we are going to push forward on, and which are priority areas based on a number of things including risk assessment, our data around evidence and discussions we have with our partners. In terms of timeline it’s going to be a busy six to twelve months.”

Alcoa Inc. History (1888 – 2003)

May 13, 2015

For a large selection of corporate histories click: International Directory of Company Histories

Company Perspectives: At Alcoa, our vision is to be the best company in the world in the eyes of our customers, shareholders, communities and people. We expect and demand the best we have to offer by always keeping Alcoa’s values top of mind. Integrity: Alcoa’s foundation is our integrity. We are open, honest and trustworthy in dealing with customers, suppliers, coworkers, shareholders and the communities where we have an impact. Environment, Health and Safety: We work safely in a manner that protects and promotes the health and well being of the individual and the environment.

Customer: We support our customers’ success by creating exceptional value through innovative product and service solutions. Excellence: We relentlessly pursue excellence in everything we do, every day. People: We work in an inclusive environment that embraces change, new ideas, respect for the individual and equal opportunity to succeed. Profitability: We earn sustainable financial results that enable profitable growth and superior shareholder value. Accountability: We are accountable individually and in teams for our behaviors, actions and results. We live our Values and measure our success by the success of our customers, shareholders, communities and people.

Company History:

The largest aluminum manufacturer in the world, Alcoa Inc. produces aluminum and alumina for automotive, aerospace, commercial transportation, construction, packaging, and other markets. Active worldwide in all major elements of the industry, Alcoa’s operations include mining, refining, smelting, fabricating, recycling, and developing technology.