Extending Victor's life before diamonds surface; Victor project has already brought $4.2 billion to Northern Ontario.

• Author: Stewart, Nick
• Position: TIMMINS

Nearly 20 years and $1 billion later, Ontario's first diamond mine is on the brink of rolling into full production. With 98 per cent of infrastructure commissioned and complete, what little work remaining on De Beers Canada's Victor Project, located 90 kilometres west of Attawapiskat, largely involves fine-tuning ore blends for the processing plant.

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Since January 20, pre-production ore has been running through the process plant, with full production anticipated for the end of this quarter, or the beginning of the third quarter at the latest.

"As with any other mining operation, you can't just turn it on and get it going," says Tom Ormsby, company spokesperson

"You have to do some early runs and see where you make improvements."

The 7,100-tonne-per-day mine is not only slightly under budget, but it is also nine months ahead of schedule; quite an achievement for as vast an undertaking as the Victor Project, Ormsby says.

Though first discovered in 1987, environmental studies at the Victor pipe site kicked off from 2002 to 2005, with approvals and full-fledged construction beginning in early 2006.

The economic spin-offs that have arisen in that time are calculated to be in the range of seven-to-one, or seven dollars for every dollar spent by De Beers. Ormsby expects that the regional benefit achieved to date is generally in the range of $6.7 billion, of which $4.2 billion has flowed into Northern Ontario's coffers through major contracts and employment.

The completion of the processing facilities required commissioning 176 separate components, which involved the engineering, construction, installation and testing of various internal elements, such as conveyor belts.

As an example of how local airlines also benefited, Ormsby says 22,000 people were flown into the Victor project and back in the last year alone.

Employment needs have also grown in recent months. A closer look at the project's needs has established the need for an increase in employment potential, raising the employee count from 400 to 454, with 85 per cent of the permanent workforce having been hired thus far. While the exact number of First Nations in that total is as yet unknown, efforts have been made to include them whenever possible.

Up to 60 per cent of the mining team is currently made up of First Nations. What's more, nearly 900 positions through the five-year construction period were also held by Aboriginals, 800 of which were from James Bay-area...