Voisey's Bay Mine is a

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 in

Labrador , nickname = "The Big Land" , etymology = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Canada , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 ...

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 ...

, near the bay of the same name. The mine is located about southwest of Nain.

Nickel deposit

A large

deposit was discovered in the hills along the western shore of Potato Island in September 1993 by Archean Inc., a prospecting firm hired by

Diamond Fields Resources Jean-Raymond Boulle, COR (born 10 October 1950) is a Monaco-based Mauritian businessman, the founder of four publicly traded companies with deposits of nickel, cobalt, copper, zinc, titanium and diamonds. Career Early career Boulle worked ...

Inc promoters

Robert Friedland Robert Martin Friedland (August 18, 1950) is an American/Canadian billionaire financier in the mining industry. Since the early 1980s, he has specialized in securing funding for the exploration and development of mineral and energy resources and ...

and

Jean-Raymond Boulle Jean-Raymond Boulle, COR (born 10 October 1950) is a Monaco-based Mauritian businessman, the founder of four publicly traded companies with deposits of nickel, cobalt, copper, zinc, titanium and diamonds. Career Early career Boulle worked ...

. This deposit is considered to be one of the most substantial mineral discoveries in Canada in years and was estimated in 2007 to contain 141 million tonnes at 1.6% nickel. In 1996,

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 ...

managers purchased the mine for $4.3 billion Canadian dollars. Surface mining began in Voisey's Bay in 2005 in order to access the nickel deposit. The bulk carrier ship Umiak I was commissioned in May 2006 to transport ore from the mine.Umiak I
''The Gossan: A Voisey's Bay Nickel Company Publication'', issue 10, April 2006 In July 2015, the ownership board of directors approved the construction of the underground phase of the Voisey's Bay Mine. The project was scheduled to take six years, and the underground operations would begin in 2020. Since the discovery of the Voisey's Bay deposit by

and Richard Garnett of Diamond Fields Resources, efforts have been increased to find similar deposits in coastal Labrador. On 11 June 2018, Premier

Dwight Ball Dwight Ball (born December 21, 1957) is a Canadian politician who was the 13th premier of Newfoundland and Labrador from December 14, 2015, to August 19, 2020, and an MHA. He represented the electoral district of Humber Valley in the Newfoundla ...

announced Vale is moving forward with its underground mine at Voisey's Bay. Ball stated that the move will extend the mine's operating life by at least 15 years. Over the five-year construction, more than 16,000 person-years of employment will be created according to Ball. First ore is expected no later than April 2021.

Long Harbour hydrometallurgical refinery

In November 2008 Newfoundland

Minister of Natural Resources The minister of natural resources () is the minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet who is responsible for Natural Resources Canada (NRCan). In addition to NRCan, the minister oversees the federal government's natural resources portfolio ...

Kathy Dunderdale Kathleen Mary Margaret "Kathy" Dunderdale (née Warren; born February 1952) is a politician and former MHA who served as the tenth premier of Newfoundland and Labrador from December 3, 2010, to January 24, 2014. Dunderdale was born and raised in ...

announced that construction should start in 2009 to build a $2.2B hydrometallurgical processing plant in Long Harbour on Newfoundland's south coast. Construction of the

Long Harbour Nickel Processing Plant The Long Harbour Nickel Processing Plant is a Canadian nickel concentrate processing facility located in Long Harbour, Newfoundland and Labrador. Operated by Vale Limited, construction on the plant started in April 2009 and operations began in 2 ...

would be started in April 2009 and operations would begin in 2014.

Pollution

In 2006, approximately 1,100 cubic meters of toxic mine

tailings In mining, tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different to overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlie ...

were released into a nearby brook after a breach in the pond liner. In 2007, 50 cubic meters of tailings slurry spilled into a bog. In 2016, Vale Newfoundland and Labrador pleaded guilty to allowing an undisclosed amount of toxic, untreated water to flow into a nearby cove in 2013. They were fined $30,000.

Labour issues

At present, workers at Voisey's Bay are flown in, via Voisey's Bay Aerodrome, from other communities in the province, and reside at a work camp while onsite. There are no current plans to build a permanent settlement at Voisey. Workers at the site went on

strike Strike may refer to: People * Strike (surname) Physical confrontation or removal *Strike (attack), attack with an inanimate object or a part of the human body intended to cause harm *Airstrike, military strike by air forces on either a suspected ...

in the summer of 2006. A core issue in the dispute was

pay equity Equal pay for equal work is the concept of labour rights that individuals in the same workplace be given equal pay. It is most commonly used in the context of sexual discrimination, in relation to the gender pay gap. Equal pay relates to the full ...

with workers at Vale Inco's facilities in

Greater Sudbury Sudbury, officially the City of Greater Sudbury is the largest city in Northern Ontario by population, with a population of 166,004 at the 2021 Canadian Census. By land area, it is the largest in Ontario and the List of the largest cities and to ...

Port Colborne Port Colborne is a city in Ontario, Canada that is located on Lake Erie, at the southern end of the Welland Canal, in the Niagara Region of Southern Ontario. The original settlement, known as Gravelly Bay, dates from 1832 and was renamed after S ...

and

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 * ...

. The question of where Voisey's Bay ore would be processed had previously been one of the obstacles to developing the site, with the government of Newfoundland and Labrador demanding that a facility be built in the province to provide jobs there, while Inco workers in Sudbury and Thompson were simultaneously threatening to strike if the ore was not sent to their existing facilities in order to preserve and protect ''their'' jobs."Cautious optimism"
''

Northern Ontario Business Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ...

'', July 2002. The existing workers in Sudbury and Thompson eventually accepted a compromise; the ore would be shipped to their facilities until 2011, then a new facility that was being built in Newfoundland would be ready to begin operations. The profits from Sudbury and Thompson would be reinvested in developing new mining sites in those communities.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.vale.com/canada/EN/aboutvale/communities/voiseysbay/Pages/default.aspx Nickel mines in Canada Mines in Newfoundland and Labrador Mining communities in Newfoundland and Labrador Labrador Vale S.A.