Mining report: life after 75: Falconbridge set to dig deep.

• Author: Wareing, Andrew
• Position: Mining

Looking to Falconbridge's future means looking down - way down. As available reserves of nickel and copper begin to deplete, Falconbridge Ltd. continues exploration efforts to identify significant deposits that could see it through for at least two or three more decades to come, says Allen Hayward, vice-president of mining for the company's nickel business unit.

The trick is getting to it.

"For the last 30 years, we've been mining more ore than we've been discovering," Hayward says. "We were getting to the point where we were telling people, if we didn't find any new reserves, we wouldn't be around after 2008."

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Falconbridge in Sudbury.

In November 2001, however, a "significant" deposit was discovered on its Nickel Rim South property near the Greater Sudbury Airport prompting Falconbridge to plan an exploratory shaft to go down and explore it.

"It's down around 5,000 feet, so it really can't be explored from surface. We have to go down and explore it," says Hayward.

He adds the company is reluctant to quantify the deposits, in part because of greater regulatory restrictions on the claims mining companies can make that are, in part, the result of the Bre-X scandal in the late 1990s.

Another encouraging area is under Morgan Lake, discovered with surface drilling in 1999 that led to interesting results.

"We also have an active regional exploration program where we're looking for other ore bodies in the Sudbury basin," he says. "We have a significant property position here so we're spending in excess of $10 million per year on our regional program and have been for some time, looking for more Nickel Rim Souths.

"We've been drilling in the area for quite some time without too much encouragement, but in the last couple of years we've really turned a corner," says Hayward. "Now we've got our teeth in some projects that have the potential to extend the life of our operations here."

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Hayward says Falconbridge's operations in the Sudbury basin began back in 1928 and, over the years, many changes have taken place. Many of the mining sites carry the names of people who were prominent in the company - names like Craig and Lindsey. Sudbury makes up a significant part of Falconbridge's integrated nickel operation (INO), consisting of four underground nickel/copper mining operations, including the Craig, Fraser, Lindsey and Lockerby mines. The company anticipates the Lockerby deposit will be...