Labrador City—Consolidated Thompson Iron Mines (CLM) has had a year of realizing goals and reaching milestones. In July, the company saw the first shipment of iron ore from the Bloom Lake mine — 165,000 tonnes — leave port in Sept-Îles en route to China.
The Bloom Lake mine in northeastern Quebec is fully operational, and CEO Richard Quesnel said he is pleased after a busy few years.
“Things are going really well,” he said of the new open-pit mining operation located just two miles south of the Quebec-Labrador border. “We have been ramping up our shipping since July — our goal is to get it up to eight million tonnes.”
On the Bloom Lake project there are currently 230 employed by Consolidated Thompson plus 25 contractual workers.
Since the project went into operation early this summer, there has been a lot of tweaking going on, but according to Quesnel, it’s been pretty smooth.
“No, there has been no major glitches,” he said of the new open-pit operation.
“We are sorting the bugs out and making sure things are working right, but I am pleased with how things are happening. Every CEO wants things to happen in the shortest time frame, and so I am pleased as we ramp things up.”
While much of the Quebec-based project has a workforce that is mostly local, Quesnel said, there are others who’ve been hired outside Quebec.
The language barrier is to be considered, he said, and in keeping with safety, a bilingual worker would be the most desired.
When it comes to the operation of the train that carries the ore cars from Bloom Lake into Wabush and on to the Point Noire port facilities, the workers are local to Labrador West, said Greg Mercer, corporate affair for CLM.
“With our railway, it’s been all local workers who’ve been trained,” said Mercer.
“We have eight engineers to operate the train and two local managers. So it’s 100 per cent local.”
Plenty of work is ongoing, Quesnel said, including everything from putting siding on buildings, welding tracks and getting the train speed up to 30 miles per hour.
In the last three years, CLM has succeeded in its mine site preparations and its infrastructure, put together a 31-kilometre rail line in eight months, purchased 740 new ore cars, acquired financing, secured markets in Asia and established a modern lay-down area near Point Noire port facilities.
Quesnel said overall, it’s been a project on the fast track. But that is the way he likes it.
“I like to see things moving very fast,” he said. “And with the local co-operation being so good, it certainly helps with the whole process.”
The Aurora
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