Kirkland Lake Gold shifting Canadian operations to Timmins

Kirkland Lake Gold is "Canada's" gold producer and now the company is shifting its attention to Canada's number one gold-producing city. Company president Tony Makuch told a recent Timmins Chamber of Commerce event that KL Gold is establishing their Canadian Operations Centre in Timmins. 

“We want to take a lot of the jobs that were done in Toronto and move them closer to site,” Makuch said. “There are a lot of jobs that were happening at the site that we see we don’t always need them at site. They’d actually be better, more comfortable, at a central location."
Makuch added, “Timmins fits for us for a number of reasons. It is the regional centre. You have a lot of services, especially air services in Timmins, so the logistics of bringing people in and out helps. We’re looking at it from that perspective.”

Timmins has long been one of Detour Lake's central supplier hubs. That factored into the company's decision as well. 

“We’re trying to recruit from Northeastern Ontario, from the region, as much as possible, as opposed to across Canada.”

“We want to start flying people in and out to the mine site, as opposed to busing. Combined travel time to the workplace currently sits around 3½ hours. By the time people show up at the Cochrane bus terminal and get bused up to site, it’s a significant amount of time. We’re trying to improve the logistics on that. Trying to be more centralized,” Makuch said.

“People come to work at Detour; they’re already going to be 14 days away from home. Then I’m asking you to take a half a day, or a day, to get to work, and then a half a day, or a day, to get home. I think that’s not really proper.”

 

Tags: Northern Ontario / Operational Updates / Gold / All Articles