Achieving Sustainable Innovation: Operating for Excellence at our Porcupine Gold Mines in Timmins, Ontario

As part of our Operating for Excellence program, we’re continuously looking for new and innovative ways to improve our operations, while respecting the environment. At Goldcorp’s Porcupine Gold Mines (PGM), a Mill Scats Reprocessing Project was implemented to turn reject materials into recovered and/or recycled steel.

The current mill at the Dome site has been in operation for over 30 years. Over the years, reject materials with large amounts of steel in it from the grinding mills have accumulated, resulting in the need for multiple locations to dispose of the spent material.

The gold contained in the reject material remained uncaptured because the risk to process the material was high -- steel in the ore has the potential to plug chutes, tear belts, and damage crushers.

After much brainstorming and review, the PGM team identified an innovative solution to remove the steel with a magnet. A loader was used to spread out the material and a magnet recovered the larger pieces of steel. The material was then passed through a two-stage screening plant. The fine material was sent to the mill for processing. The scrap steel could then be removed from the material and recycled by a local company. The recycled steel covered the cost of salvaging and screening processes.

Overall, this solution lead to an additional 4,100 recovered ounces, resulting in an increase in net revenue of $4.9 Million in 2013.

Further geological surveys have been completed and locations have been identified for a 2014 campaign, with an estimated 2,000 additional recovered ounces projected by applying the same handling process.

Goldcorp is exploring opportunities to implement this solution at our other sites.

Congratulations to the PGM for leading changes for a better Goldcorp.