Redstone redux: Northern Sun to offer custom milling.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay

After an eight-month, $4-million cleanup at Redstone Mill in Timmins, the mill and its equipment are in pristine condition. And owner Northern Sun can't wait to mess it all up.

"We probably have the cleanest mill in North America," said Northern Sun president David Rigg. "We're hoping we're going to be able to make it quite dirty"

A cease-working order issued by the Ministry of Labour halted operations at the mill and a cleanup was mandated after ore coming into the mill--mined at the company's McWatters Mine--was found to contain asbestos early last year.

The level three cleanup involved 20 people, on site since May, erecting 50.000 square feet of scaffolding and dismantling every piece of equipment to scrub "every nook and cranny" at the mill. Rigg said.

The company resurfaced the road between McWatters and the mill, the receiving area was rebuilt and resurfaced, and any ore stockpiles on the property have been returned to the open pit.

"We've passed all the air tests," Rigg said. "The Ministry of Labour are very happy with that and the cease-working order has now been changed."

Northern Sun planned to restart the mill in January to ensure the circuits and equipment worked, and restart was expected to take three months.

The cleanup was the start of a major restructuring for Northern Sun in 2013, which included a name change. Northern Sun was formerly known as Liberty Mines.

"Part of that reason is to change focus in management in terms of where we want the company to go," Rigg said. "Essentially, what we're trying to do is build a mining company around the Redstone Mill."

The mill is being set up to handle toll, or custom, milling, done on a fee-for-service contract basis.

Built in 2006, the mill has a capacity to process 1.500 tonnes of ore per day and is designed to operate separate circuits processing different kinds of ore.

Northern Sun has secured a year-long contract with Wallbridge Mining, which will start in May, to process ore from its copper-PGM Broken Hammer site in Sudbury. The ore will be trucked from Sudbury to Timmins for processing.

The mill will produce a gravity concentrate, which separates the small, denser parts of ore. leaving a copper-nickel concentrate, which will be shipped elsewhere for smelting. Rigg said Wallbridge can get better recoveries from the Redstone Mill than from an operation closer to home, while still covering the additional transportation costs.

"We've got basically half the circuit filled for 12...