Well take it as it is given, but they have mined for 100 years.
They had their best shot at removing it all. Victor is new, but its deep. FNX was never gone at because it was predominantly PGMs', which Inco by policy would never mine. Falco ran out of footwall copper 20 years ago, so they went to Kidd when they had the chance and the Raglan which they knew would sustain them in nickel throught MOTC. They did not before because they would not go head to head with Inco in nickel from the basin. They did not have the ore. So they stuck to copper and then branched out camp wise when that faded.
Frood closed before its day because of lax safety. Creighton was compromised from the get go by pit blasting so had a limited and too short span.
The nickel of Sudbury was made from 50 million ton mines. Largest richest underground mines in the world for many many years. Made Canada the world leader in nickel, with Russia right behind it. Tax structure and pollution regs of the Trudeau years led Inco offshore to the 25% havens of Latin America, where taxes were frequently not paid anyway. It was cheaper by the lb to mine sulfide nickel than 0.5% laterite, but tax and regs were easier, so screw Canuckistan was the Inco motto. Make it overseas, sell it overseas, what taxes... The 80's led Inco into gold, but they had no clue what they were doing and lost money on just about every mine. Rather than pay 700 per hour royalties to a good system of SO2 abatement which promised 99.7% reduction they paid 100,000,000 to Walter Curlook to come up with a very inferior way of making acid, which had only 90% abatement. And that after 20 years of trying. We paid in pollution for Inco's stingy standoffishness.
Nickel was mined at Sudbury at an average underground grade of 1.2% Ni, and on an average profit on investment of 10%. Low profit. And much of that profit was made selling 4-nines nickel from nickel carbonyl, or NiC02, at not $3.75 a lb -- the quoted Comex price, but $30.00 a lb. That's right. Much of Inco's nickel was sold as ultra pure to end users for sky high prices. A highway haul truck running down the road with barrels of ultra high grade nickel carbonyl was worth 4.6 million dollars in 1975.
The PGM's, all 6 of them paid the mining. The nickel and copper were almost free, excepting that the Orford process of making nickel matte was expensive and slow, and not very good at getting purity. (Which is why the Timmins ores, which are almost pure nickel right from the mine are a very good idea)
Along came Falco and developed a much better process, which got snagged by Sherrit Gordon. All hydro mettallurgical. Much cheaper and better and you can make all the metals including PGM's in a wet chemical ammonia process. And get the Cobalt out of the tailings to boot. Should have made Sherrit a million but they had no ore. Falco and Inco had it all. So they went to Cuba, but eventually wound up in fertilizer. Now that process is for anyone to use, so theoretically anyone with a 2500 ton per day mill can take advantage of it, and make matte and other things too and profit from say an open pit ore of 0.5% ni, which can be put into production now that Inco no longer can drop the price of Ni on you. (Pat Sheridan could not do Texmont not because he did not have ore and a process ... He had 1% Ni and he could make matte, only the fifth group in the world to do that .. but because of Inco's stranglehold on the price structure at the time..) But nobody gets it. The investors are all hypnotized by "you can't do ni-cu because of its too expensive and Inco would not do it at that grade, so they cannot" attitude.. (Cons are lousy grade in nickel, and the process expensive is the old saw.. all true.. you need bulk mining and low costs.. low milling costs and shipping.. the smelter will beat you to death... but there is a way out as I explained.. ) Pat Sheridan tried it many moons ago, but he was one man against the machine and just a tad too small to succeed. The Elephant stepped on him and he was a footprint in time..
So 5 to 10 million tons of ore that is fabulously profitable as in CDN Royalties, or other deposits we know from 25 to 50 million tons in BC go begging. The public believes it's all hooey. It's real, but you need mill money. As far as I know mill money is the only kind of money that one can see on a rock but not be able to pry it off with a 50 ton crane. It's holographic.
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