Unearthing a new industry: magnesium mine promising jobs, diversity in Timmins.

AuthorKelly, Lindsay
PositionTIMMINS

A new mining project coming to Timmins has the capacity to create 1,000 local jobs and economically diversify the City With a Heart of Gold.

General Magnesium Corp. is set to start production this spring on a magnesium-talc mine that has an NI 43-101 resource estimate of close to 100 million tonnes, including 54,076,357 tonnes in the measured and indicated category, and 43,000,000 tonnes in the inferred category.

Last fall, following 16 months of due diligence, the company secured a multi-year, $4.9-billion deal with Hunter Douglas Metals, whose parent company manufactures aluminum blinds. Magnesium is a key component used as an alloy in manufacturing aluminum.

General Magnesium's president and CEO, William Quesnel, said the deal is huge and marks an excellent foundation for the longevity of the company.

"We've sold all our product--100 per cent of our magnesium--for a 15-year renewable contract," he said. "So if you do the math on it, it's worth billions of dollars."

Lighter than aluminum by a third, and two-thirds lighter than steel, magnesium is also valued in the auto industry for use in making vehicles ; lightweight. Quesnel said his company has been approached by die cast manufacturers who've expressed an interest in setting up shop alongside the mine, hinting at potential future investment in the city.

The company is currently working on securing an offtake agreement for its talc.

"Once we do that, then we have all our products sold, so it's kind of really neat," Quesnel added.

Though the magnesium-talc operation may seem to have come out of nowhere, the company has been working on the project since 2000, when it acquired the property, located in Porcupine just east of Timmins, from Teck Cominco.

Quesnel, a 30-year industry veteran, grew up in Timmins, but left to attain his geology degree at the University of Waterloo.

Since then, he's worked in Thunder Bay for a consulting firm, at Kidd Creek in Timmins, with LAC Minerals (now Barrick Gold), and in various capacities in Nicaragua, Argentina, Venezuela and Chile.

"I thought once I left Timmins I would be gone," said Quesnel, who currently resides in Perth, south of Ottawa. "But coming back, I love the North and I really believe in the North."

Because the ore is so soft, there's no need for drilling, blasting or crushing on site, which offers a huge cost-saving measure, Quesnel said. Instead, the company employs a Wirtgen surface miner--made in Germany and one of only 500...

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