Rocanville Mine
Owner: PotashCorp
The Rocanville mine site is located 18 km east of the community of Rocanville in south-east Saskatchewan, Canada.
In 1970, Rocanville was the last Saskatchewan mine to come into production. It is 100% owned by the PotashCorp, a former Crown corporation which went public in 1989, when it had its initial public offerings on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges.
Potash is a general term covering several types of potassium salts, of which the most important is potassium chloride, the mineral sylvite. Potash is a nutrient essential for plant growth, and is a cornerstone of modern agricultural fertilizers. Roughly 95 per cent of world potash production goes into fertilizer, while the other five per cent is used in commercial and industrial products - everything from soap to television tubes.
Saskatchewan represents approximately one-third of the world's potash production capacity and has approximately 53% of global potash reserves.
Rocanville is a conventional long room and pillar underground potash mine, operating at a depth of 960 meters. Mining operations employ continuous mining (boring) machines.
It produces granular and standard product for agricultural use and standard industrial product. Annual capacity is 3.0 million tonnes KCl.
Mining & Operation
Rocanville is one of the lowest-cost potash production facilities in the world and has a capacity of 3.0 million tonnes KCl per year.
Its mine workings are 960 meters (3,150 ft) below the Saskatchewan prairie and stretch as far as 11 km (7 miles) north and 7 km (4.3 miles) south from the mine shafts. The shafts carry employees down to the mining level and ore up to the mill.
The Rocanville mine is a conventional potash mine and uses long room and pillar mining techniques to extract the ore.
The mine employs five four-rotor Marietta continuous mining machines. Each machine cuts a profile of 2.4 m by 8.23 m (8 ft by 27 ft) and advances at a rate of up to 30 cm per minute.
Each machine typically produces 700 t per hour. Once mined, the ore passes directly from the miner onto a conveyor system which transports the ore to underground storage bins for hoisting to the surface.
A central control system which supervises all of the mining and processing operations had been implemented and resulted in visible operational and metallurgical improvements.
Box 460
Rocanville, SK S0A 3L0
Canada
Ph: (306) 645-2870
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