March 25 – 26 expo expected to attract over 600 delegates
The Municipality of Greenstone and the Greenstone Labour Market Group are holding a Grow Greenstone Expo March 25 and 26 at the Victoria Inn and Conference Centre in Thunder Bay to prepare for the coming mining boom in the Ring of Fire.
The event will bring together up to 600 government officials, representatives of mining companies, suppliers, First Nation communities and academic institutions across the North.
Formed in 2001, Greenstone is comprised of the former municipalities of Geraldton, Longlac , Nakina, Beardmore and several other communities along the Highway 11 corridor in northwestern Ontario.
Billing itself as the Gateway to the Ring of Fire, Greenstone lies approximately 350 kilometres south of two proposed mine development projects: Cliffs Natural Resources’ Black Thor chromite property and Noront Resources’ nickel, copper and PGM-rich Eagle’s Nest project.
Greenstone’s current population of approximately 4,900 is expected to double within the next five years and double again thereafter, according to Vicky Blanchard, the municipality’s economic development officer and chair of the Greenstone Labour Market Working Group.
“The demand for workers will be significant with a projected cumulative hiring requirements over the next 10 years totalling approximately 7,000 workers,” she noted.
The Grow Greenstone Expo will have three components: a business exchange modelled on an economic gardening approach, a procurement and investment forum, and a career fair for job seekers interested in exploring miningrelated career opportunities.
Cliffs’ $3 billion chromite project is currently undergoing an environmental assessment and is scheduled to go into production in 2017.
It will include two open pits producing up to 12,000 tonnes of ore per day, a concentrator producing up to 7,200 tonnes of chromium concentrate per day and an integrated transportation system consisting of a load out facility at the mine site and a 300 kilometre permanent all-season road to a transload facility at the CN rail line just west of Nakina.
Construction will require up to 500 workers at the mine site and up to another 300 for the construction of the integrated transportation system.
Noront Resources, currently undergoing an environmental assessment for its Eagle’s Nest project, will require several hundred more workers for construction and operation of an underground mine a few kilometres from Cliffs’ Black Thor property.
There is also potential for the development of several other mines in the 5,000 square kilometre mineral-rich Ring of Fire region once a transportation link opens up the region to more cost effective exploration activity.
In Greenstone’s own backyard, Premier Gold Mines has received a license to begin dewatering the shaft and underground workings of its former producing MacLeod-Mosher Mine on its Hardrock property in Geraldton and plans to commission a preliminary economic assessment next year.
The Hardrock property hosts measured and indicated resources of 2.5 million ounces of gold and an inferred resource of another 1.1 million ounces, raising hopes for the re-emergence of a gold mining camp in the Beardmore- Geraldton area that once hosted 13 mines.
Training the workforce that will be required for all this activity has been the major focus of the Greenstone Labour Market Working Group, which brings together some 30 communities, agencies and academic institutions, including community colleges in Timmins, Sudbury and Thunder Bay.
A growth plan for the community and plans for a proposed Greenstone Regional Skill Centre will be unveiled at the Grow Greenstone Expo in March.
