Birchtree Mine is an

underground Underground most commonly refers to: * Subterranea (geography), the regions beneath the surface of the Earth Underground may also refer to: Places * The Underground (Boston), a music club in the Allston neighborhood of Boston * The Underground (S ...

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow to ...

mine Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging * Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun ...

, owned and operated by

Vale Inco Vale Canada Limited (formerly Vale Inco, CVRD Inco and Inco Limited; for corporate branding purposes simply known as "Vale" and pronounced in English) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Brazilian mining company Vale. Vale's nickel mining and ...

in the city of

Thompson Thompson may refer to: People * Thompson (surname) * Thompson M. Scoon (1888–1953), New York politician Places Australia *Thompson Beach, South Australia, a locality Bulgaria * Thompson, Bulgaria, a village in Sofia Province Canada * ...

Manitoba Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. It lies in the nickel containing

Thompson Belt The Thompson Belt, also referred to as the Thompson Nickel Belt, is an Archean and early Proterozoic geologic feature in Manitoba, Canada. It contains gneiss related to deformation of the Trans-Hudson orogeny The Trans-Hudson orogeny or Tra ...

, a geologic feature associated with the

Circum-Superior Belt The Circum-Superior Belt is a widespread Paleoproterozoic large igneous province in the Canadian Shield of Northern, Western and Eastern Canada. It extends more than from northeastern Manitoba through northwestern Ontario, southern Nunavut to ...

large igneous province A large igneous province (LIP) is an extremely large accumulation of igneous rocks, including intrusive (sills, dikes) and extrusive (lava flows, tephra deposits), arising when magma travels through the crust towards the surface. The formation ...

throughout the

Superior craton The Superior Craton is a stable crustal block covering Quebec, Ontario, and southeast Manitoba in Canada, and northern Minnesota in the United States. It is the biggest craton among those formed during the Archean period. A craton is a large part ...

History

Birchtree mine originally opened in 1965 until 1978 when it was put in "standby" until 1988. The mine reopened again in 1989. In 2000, Inco authorized US$48 million to deepen the mine to , expanding production to 3,800 tons per day. The Deepening Project allowed Inco to access ore between the 3950 level and 2300 level. In 2002, Birchtree Mine started producing ore from between 2750 level and 2300 level. In 2003, the first ore was extracted between the 3950 and 3450 level.

Safety

In 2005, Birchtree mine was the recipient of the

John T. Ryan Trophy John T. Ryan Trophies are awards of excellence presented by Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM) to a mine in a given category which experiences the lowest accident frequency during the previous year in all of Canada. Thre ...

for having achieving the lowest accident frequency of all Canadian

metal A metal (from Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typicall ...

mines. In 2008, it received the regional John T. Ryan trophy for the

Prairies Prairies are ecosystems considered part of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome by ecologists, based on similar temperate climates, moderate rainfall, and a composition of grasses, herbs, and shrubs, rather than trees, as the ...

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories (abbreviated ''NT'' or ''NWT''; french: Territoires du Nord-Ouest, formerly ''North-Western Territory'' and ''North-West Territories'' and namely shortened as ''Northwest Territory'') is a federal territory of Canada. ...

Footnotes

Nickel mines in Canada Mines in Manitoba Thompson, Manitoba Underground mines in Canada {{Manitoba-geo-stub