Free Report On Field Trip Report

KGHM International has become a diversified mining company operates different projects around the globe, and it is a base for expansion for its parent company, KGHM Polish Copper, Inc. We have visited the one of their underground mine called McCreedy West Mine on March 9, 2015.This mine mainly produce copper, Nickel and some of gold. Each of their operational is uniquely in this mine. They value and distinguish each of their unique procedures and do the best to be perfect in all places where they operate.
During the visit to the McCreedy West Mine, we learnt that they believe in four core values: Zero Harm, Driven by results, they are successful because they work as a team. These values not only determine how they act in their operations, but also provide the basis for their interactions and they way their communities relate to their surroundings. These values help ensure that McCreedy West Mine operate safely and social and environmentally responsible.
The culture of Zero Harm is the core of McCreedy West Mine values fundamental. The company is to the healthiness and protection of workers and the environment in which it operates.
The owner of McCreedy West Mine is KGHM International, ethically responsible liable to communities in which it operates. Their victory relies on relationships with their workers and clients. These relations are by a style of work in partnership and collaboration capabilities and teamwork. These relationships promote sharing their learning, available resources and efforts they put to maintain the high quality working environment and commitment to their values of Zero Harm throughout cooperation, belief in a broader variety of communal, artistic and financial achievement of each scheme’s components.
The management of McCreedy West Mine presumes a leaders function to affirm community participation and growth and broader scope of welfare. Their performance is evaluated granting to renowned standards. They support the workers to participate in local programs to improve the welfare of communities and inform all stakeholders of their corporate commitments. The McCreedy West Mine was founded by Inco in 1970 and was functioned until 1998; however, KGHM restarted McCreedy West in 2002.

Primary access

The primary access is used by ramps to reach the mining area, even though this mine is somewhat very old, but many parts of the development have a good rebuild and maintain. The most area of ramps has dimensioned about 12feet by 11feet; some of the drifts at working area have 9ft by 6ft or a little bit of bigger than this. The size of these ramps gives much wider space let transportation equipment to go though, and the company has more chosen to buy different equipment. Depend on support system and wall condition of the ramps,
They used slurry and concrete at my entry and some been mined area, such as first aid room and refuge station. For the most area of ramps and drift, they used cable and rock blots to support each part of the drift, depend on extensive of direction to decide number of cable or rock blots to be installed. In addition, In order to prevent rock drop, they used mesh at 90 percent of the entire mine.
The wall condition also are significant factor support of drift, they did excellent job on rock drop preventing by mesh but still many parts of mined or working area has broken rock hanging in the mesh, and many cracks in the wall and back (top of the ramps). These conditions might be because of vibrations, but it is bigger the safety concern and support problem.

The particular mining method utilized for ore excavation

The mining methods I observed at this mine we rearranged by the ore body's spatial geometry and denigration of waste rock dilution. However, other methods utilized here are as follows: Sublevel Long hole, Metal loss in Backfill Floors, FW External Dilution per 10 ft, HW External Dilution per 10ft. Lift, Mechanized or Conventional Captive Cut & Fill, Global Backfill Dilution and Mining Loss –Pillars, etc.

Access drift dimension in a different area of mine

We have visited three different working areas:
First working area has dimension as 9ft by 6ft working face; however, chief ore going to excavate is copper, the grade for this part is around 3%, support for this working area is rock bolt. Drilling can plan six rows and six or seven holes per row. Each whole depth can be drilled 11ft used by jumbo. Next working area we have a visit is about 9ft by 10ft working face area and the primary ore in this part is same as the last stop is Cooper, grade is about 3%. The depth is 12ft for each hole.

Production rate Development rate

FNX concentrated in the Sudbury Basin in Canada, where he participated in five historic mines: Levack, McCreedy West, Norman Victoria and Kirkwood. Exploration attempts were focused on the copper during 2002, and drilling limned up precious deposit in 2000 in copper. FNX then began advanced exploration wells were dug 2000. A market crash in 2008 caused FNX suspended ore production nickel contact Levack and McCreedy West. Meanwhile, the development of ramps on the wall Levack (Morrison deposit) extended. Level of 3800 of prime access ramp was achieved in 2009 and in first month of 2010, FNX denounced identification of copper, nickel and other precious materials in Victoria and commercial production began at the end of 2010. Because this mine is kind of old and other issues, so monthly production of the whole mine is about 5000 ton, daily production is around 280 ton. Operation set 10 hours per shift, and two shifts per day. Accounting to the calculations, they will produce about 140 ton in one shift per day. In addition, the advance rate is about 500ft and about five holes one shift.

Ventilation requirement

Ventilation system for the mine is an essential functioning mechanism, which helps the workers of the mine to breathe fresh air every day; because, fresh air always has, remains the primary concern for miners. Current ventilation system installed at this mine is one of them most sophisticated system because it blows millions of CFMs of air with the help of fans into the mine. There are three ventilation fans, two for inlet, and the other one is exhaustion (photo below). Two blue raises are 15K CFM and 140K CFM; the exhaustion is 88K CFM. However, the primary system for ventilation in this mine contains surface fans down carrying air through production Shaft and underground booster’s fans. Besides this for exhaust, system includes main haulage ramp that takes the exhausted air from 153 OB and MOB. Underground supporters take air from ore and release it to exhaust to surface. Fresh air with 134.5 m3/s (285 kcfm) is forced down distributed through the services ramp with the help of shafts by booster fans. This fresh air is to ore zones of McCreedy. Keeping the current situation, this ventilation system is sufficient for the mine; however, if new ore zones are becoming part of the production in this mine then ventilation requirement will increase from 1.8 million cfms to 2.7 million cfms. In relation to it, the existing system is not capable to provide this much volume of air to facilitate the mine requirements; therefore, an upgrade will be required to provide the sufficient amount of air.
A.-T. Energy Management in conjunction with Inco undertook an innovative approach

Types of mining equipment

Hauling: MINETRUCK MT5020 made by Atlas Copco, 50 tons, 700hp, cost one and half million and one tire cost about $6000. Diesel. McCreedy West Mine has delivery of new equipments like Maclean Engineering scissor-lift bolting, which is well equipped with an Atlas Copco 1132 drifter used to drill holes for rebar bolts and a handling arm, which is a small drill. Truck haulage to haul ore to the surface, Atlas Copco, MT444 and MT436Bs and MT5010s well equipped with Cummins QSK19 engine with a remarkable speed.

Challenging mining issues that currently affect the operation

As before, the major ore will be mined nickel, but for some reasons they cannot get the permission from the government to mine nickel. This is the reason why they only mine copper now and production is low. So this area they are currently challenging. And control the costs, because global mining economic recession, so the every costs like operating cost, capital cost, labor cost and maintain cost are all more sensitive than past. Therefore, the keep the spending under the control is essential challenging now. Copper market value is also company's top priority and finding ore area that has high grade and high reserve to increase the production. Muscular Dystrophy Foundation Sudbury, team maintenance of the place of mine, joined McCreedy and copper scrap donated by a patronized. In 2005 production was the first camp Sudbury with separate infrastructure first deposit group of copper, nickel and platinum with low sulfur content. In 2008, Nickel contact was set aside due to low prices. Production of nickel contact, it was later resumed in 2001 in collaboration with Xstrata Nickel.
Nickel conversion into a mineral substance at the McCreedy West Mine was discovered in 2002 co-occurred with the growth of Deposit MP since 2002 2005; however, achievement was accompanied by others, admitting 2000 delimitating depositaries of precious in the ownership of Podolsky and the discovery of deposit of copper, nickel and precious metals in high-grade Levack property in 2005. Few years back in 2010, they found Victoria deposit of these metals including other precious metals, such as gold, platinum, and palladium. This is as one of the largest high-level deposit discovered in the region of Sudbury in the company’s history.
The Group has implemented programs drilling Levack / Morrison Footwally Falconbridge area Footwallen Sudbury designed to recognize chances of mineralization of beautiful metals to increase the resource. Furthermore, the Group North America is evaluating exploration opportunities in other properties around the Sudbury Basin.