Kidd Creek Mine
The Kidd Mine is in northern Ontario, 500 miles northwest of Toronto. The mine began operation in 1966, producing copper, zinc, indium, cadmium, silver and sulphuric acid. The deposit is one of the largest and richest volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits in the world.
There is an underground mine, and metallurgical facilities consisting of a copper concentrator, smelter and refinery, and zinc, cadmium, indium plant, liquid sulphur dioxide and sulfuric acid plant. Kidd's concentrating, smelting and refining processes are among the most advanced in the world.
The mine currently employs 1400 people and operates 7 days a week with two 12-hour shifts. The properties comprise 14 patented half lots covering 896 hectares of freehold mining land.
Commissioning for Mine D expansion began in 2004, and is scheduled to increase the operation's ultimate capacity, in stages, to 2.7Mt/yr of ore to 2012 and deepen Kidd Mine to a final depth of 9,500 ft and extending the life of mine to 2017. Kidd is the deepest base metal mine in the world.
Mining Operation
The mining method underground is blasthole stoping. Key equipment underground includes Ingersoll-Rand, Cubex and Mission blasthole drills, Tamrock haulers. Ore on the 6000 level passes through a rockbreaker and grizzly , crushed by a 360 M.T.P.H. jaw crusher. Phase 2 development calls for a second gyratory crusher capable of crushing 1.2 million tonnes per year at the 6800 level. Ore is skipped to the surface.
Production drilling is done with a fleet of 9 In-the-hole hammer drills. A 1.2 m or a .7 m bored slot raise is drilled from the sublevel to the undercut using a Robbins 34R raiseborer. The slot is opened up by blasting around the raisebore hole in stages. Rings which are typically spaced at 3 meters can then be blasted into the slot.
Ore is crushed by a 42x 65 gyratory crusher on the 2800 level, skipped to the surface, and hauled by rail 27 kilometers to the metallurgical site at Hoyle. The train uses twenty-five to thirty 90-tonne rail cars and makes 4 to 5 trips per day.
Postal Bag 2002
Timmins, ON
CAN P4N 7K1
Phone: +1 (705) 235-8121 ext. 73
Fax: +1 (705) 235-8121
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