Jill Vienneau, Geologist II at Nickel
Rim South Mine

Xstrata Nickel’s Sudbury operations consist of underground mines, a mill and a smelter. The Company has been mining nickel-copper ores in the Sudbury area of northern Ontario, Canada, since 1929. The facilities are spread throughout the 60 kilometre-long, oval-shaped geological formation known as the Sudbury basin.

Nickel and copper are the primary metals but cobalt and precious metals, such as gold, silver, platinum and palladium are also produced.

Mining

There are two underground nickel-copper mines in Sudbury: Nickel Rim South and Fraser. The Nickel Rim South mine is currently Sudbury’s largest mining operation.

Milling

The Strathcona concentrator receives ore from the two Sudbury mines as well as third-party custom feed ores and produces two concentrate streams – a nickel-copper concentrate that goes to the Sudbury Smelter for smelting and a copper concentrate that goes to Xstrata Copper for smelting and refining. The mill has a maximum capacity of approximately 2.75 million tonnes of ore per year.

Smelting

The Sudbury Smelter currently smelts Xstrata Nickel nickel-copper concentrate from the Sudbury, Raglan and XNA (Australia) operations and processes custom-feed materials in the form of concentrates and secondary products. It is capable of producing 95,000 tonnes of nickel, copper and cobalt in matte annually. The smelted and granulated matte is sent by rail to large port facilities in Québec City, then shipped overseas to Nikkelverk in Norway for refining into pure metals.