The Duck Pond Operations, which mines 657,000 tonnes of high-quality copper and zinc ore a year, says it an environmentally conscientious company. It recycles an average of 90 percent of the mill process water from its tailings pond, with the remaining water requirements provided by the Tally Pond fresh water supply system. In addition, mill tailings not used as backfill are pumped underwater in a submerged tailings pond.

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The Duck Pond Operations, located in central Newfoundland, Canada, southwest of Grand Falls-Windsor, is thriving with rich resources – both underground and above ground, according to General Manager Bob Kelly.

Although the operation mines 657,000 tonnes of high-quality copper and zinc ore a year, “I would say people are the most valuable resource we have, and we want to keep it that way,” Kelly asserts.

By all standards, the mine is in its infancy stages. Production began in January 2007 and is expected to continue through the next five to six years. However, the mine’s roots can be traced back more than three decades when Canadian miner Falconbridge discovered the small Burnt Pond copper/zinc prospect in 1973.

In 1980, the Boundary deposit was discovered, and drilling occurred between 1985 and 1991. The diamond drilling delineated the Upper Duck zone and identified the Sleeper and Lower Duck zones, the company explains.

In 1999, Thundermin Resources Inc. acquired the property from Falconbridge through its joint venture with Queenston Mining Inc. However, Aur Resources purchased the two companies’ interests in 2002 and conducted a feasibility study in March of that year. The company decided to pursue production in December 2004. Construction on the $157 million mining project began exactly two years later.

In 2007, Teck Cominco Ltd., one of the largest mining companies in Canada, acquired the mine from Aur Resources.

“There are advantages to being a business unit of Teck Cominco,” Kelly says of the mine’s relationship with its parent company. “We can access technical resources when needed and we’re able to share ideas with other Teck operations in terms of safety and health.

“They have larger marketing capabilities as well as access to capital. Given we are a short-life mine, there is potential for individuals within this company to move on to other operations within the family, and that’s a big advantage.”

The Process
The Duck Pond Mine is an underground operation, which uses long-hole, bench and drift-and-fill mining methods. It is accessed through a ramp driven at a 15 percent grade in the footwall of the deposit.

When production began in the spring of 2007, the ramp was 300 meters deep. The ramp is expected to be 3,027 meters long by the time Duck Pond completes production. The mine will be approximately 430 meters below ground at this point.

The uncrushed ore is trucked to a surface stockpile, fed through a grizzly to a jaw crusher and then to a 1,500-tonne coarse ore bin. A belt feeder underneath the bin reclaims the ore onto a conveyor feeding the grinding circuit at a semiautogenous mill. The ore slurry is then pumped to a flotation circuit, which consists of bulk copper/lead, copper/lead separation and zinc.      

Concentrates are dewatered through a thickening and pressure filtration process and trucked to a storage facility at the port of Turf Point near St. Georges in Newfoundland.

Concentrates produced at the mine are sold to Xstrata PLC under a life-of-mine concentrate sales agreement. The first shipment of concentrate from the Turf Point Port was in April 2007 and will continue monthly until the end of the mine’s life.

“In 2008, we’ll mine 1,800 tonnes of ore per day that will yield, on an annual basis, 41 million pounds of copper, 76 million pounds of zinc, 574 ounces of silver and 5,000 ounces of gold,” Kelly says, noting that Duck Pond’s average copper grade is 3.29 percent and its average zinc grade 5.68 percent. “So, we have good quality raw material and good quality of concentrate and a great quality of people.”