LAC MINES THE AMERICAS
Modern-day LAC Minerals rests on four pillars — the Doyon mine (featured in the Fall Issue of The Northern Miner Magazine), the Bousquet complex, Bullfrog in Nevada and the El Indio complex in the wi…
News
LAKEFIELD PASSES THE 50 MARK
Thayer Lindsley had an undisputed talent for finding and developing mines. Patience, however, wasnt one of his strong points. As president of the rapidly expanding Ventures Group in the early 1940s, L…
GROUND CONTROL
Rockbolts are rare at El Indio. You might find them in the service bays, along with screening or shotcreting. But they are not in evidence in the main drifts or in stopes. Only where drifts cross faul…
WORKER PAYRATES
Labor costs run between US$500 to $1,000 per month for unionized workers at El Indio. Workers also benefit from an incentive program, similar to mining bonuses at Canadian operations, and a profit-sha…
ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECT
Arsenic has been the bugbear at El Indio since its inception. Currently, 93% of the arsenic is captured before it goes out the roaster stacks. LAC is working to increase the gas capture to 98%. Accord…
THE CRITICS ARE SILENT: LAC’s innovative hedging is now industry
LAC Minerals was criticized at the turn of the 1980s for “speculating” on the gold price by hedging gold production. For the mining industry back then, this was a true innovation — and heresy. Hedgin…
50 YEARS AGO (December 01, 1991)
GOLD FIELDS DRILLING AGAIN Due to difficulties with overburden there have been no further results from drilling in the new west ore area at Malartic Gold Fields. Hole No. 154, located 100 ft. west of …
A SINGULAR PURSUIT: The tangle of companies his father Jack Allen
Over the past two decades, Peter Ackerman Allen has fused together a perplexing assemblage of small, linked mining companies into a single, modern, big-league gold player called LAC Minerals. Along th…
WHAT’S NEW: HOSE ASSEMBLY MADE EASY
Aeroquip (Canada) Inc. has introduced MatchMate Plus, a trademarked crimp hose assembly system that includes a new one-piece global fitting and other enhancements to its popular Match Mate system. The…
THE LITTLE MILL THAT COULD: Est Malartic mill copes with a variety
If ever there were to be a country-wide award for flexibilty in processing plants, for adapting to changing times, then LAC Mineral’s Est Malartic mill would be the run-away winner. The mill was built…
HEAP LEACHING, A PROFITABLE SIDELINE
Heap leach ore at El Indio is a byproduct of mining in the Tambo open pits. Low-grade ore running on average 1.2 g per tonne — waste rock were it not for heap leaching — is piled in 6-m lifts up to …
EL INDIO: PRODUCTIVITY IS PRIORITY ONE; An underground and open
The El Indio mine sprawls across several peaks of the Chilean Andes some 4,000 m above sea level. A collection of profitable underground and open-pit mines, the complex lies approximately 190 km east …