Confederation reaches for gold in Ecuador.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: MINING

Trainers at Confederation College are anxiously awaiting the run-up to development of a new mine in Ecuador where they'll be helping to prepare a workforce to support a major gold project.

Last March, the Thunder Bay college signed a training agreement involving Lundin Mining and Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja in support of the Fruta del Norte gold project now in the advanced stage of development.

Don Bernosky, the college's vice-president of regional workforce development, said Lundin is still going through the permitting process, which will set the stage for other mining development across the country to come ahead.

"We're looking at some strategies on how we want to deliver and operate. Until they actually get the green light to start this development, we're in a holding pattern at this point."

The Lundin Group of companies acquired the project from Kinross Gold, finalizing the sale in December 2014 for US$240 million.

The Canadian-Swedish miner wants to put into production one of the world's largest undeveloped and highest-grade underground gold projects, and do it within two years.

Bernosky said the miner expects to release its feasibility study by the end of March and have government permits to proceed with a mine by June.

"Then it's showtime. It's a really compressed scale of development with the road going in, the (mine) portal, processing, and a lot of construction."

The Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador's largest technical university, is currently building a training centre in the province of Zamora, close to the mine site.

Confederation will train the skilled and semi-skilled workforce training for the mining operation, said Bernosky.

As part of the negotiations between Lundin and the government, up to 80 per cent of the mine's workforce must be Ecuadorean.

The college will replicate a version of their Ring of Fire Aboriginal Training Alliance (RoFATA), an industry and First Nation partnership that has...