Agnico Eagle’s Meliadine mine close to extracting 2M ounces of gold

Milestone expected to be reached in November; Nunatsiaq News takes tour to learn how ore is transformed

Agnico Eagle mine workers drill holes at the Meliadine gold mine’s open pit and fill them with explosives. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)

By Arty Sarkisian

Agnico Eagle’s Meliadine gold mine is nearing a milestone.

In November, the company projects the mine located near Rankin Inlet will have produced two million ounces of gold, said Pujjuut Kusugak, director of Nunavut affairs for Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.

Two million ounces is just under 57 tonnes — or perhaps a more appropriate measurement for such occasions, approximately 28.5 small elephants.

Nunatsiaq News was given a tour Oct. 2 of the above-ground part of Meliadine mine to learn how rock gets blasted, excavated, crushed and transformed via chemical reaction into such an enormous amount of gold.

The only part of the mine off limits was its gold refinery. That part of the establishment is not even open for most of the employees.

Making golden ‘loafs’ since 2019  

Agnico Eagle acquired the site 25 kilometres north of Rankin Inlet in 2010 but started operation nine years later, in June 2019.

Over the past five years, the mine has been increasing its capacity and can now process around six tonnes of ore per day. That’s enough to make one 28-kilogram gold brick, roughly the size of a loaf of bread.

Meliadine is one of the three sites Agnico Eagle operates in Nunavut, along with the Meadowbank complex and a gold exploration project in Hope Bay. The company also operates mines in northern Ontario, Quebec, Mexico, Finland and Australia.

In a quarterly report published in April, Agnico Eagle announced its Nunavut operations represented close to 25 per cent of its US$377.5 million quarterly net income.

Currently, Meliadine mine has approximately 1,500 employees working on two-week rotations. There are roughly 700 people at the mine site at all times.

‘Making things go boom’

A blast at an open pit at the Meadowbank Complex. Meliadine has a similar pit that uses the same system of ore extraction. (Photo courtesy of Agnico Eagle mine)

There are two ways gold is mined at the Meliadine: through the open pit and from a system of tunnels.

There is currently one open pit at Meliadine that’s responsible for around 15 per cent of all gold produced at the mine. It’s 1.1 kilometres long, 360 metres wide and 160 metres deep. The company started digging the pit in 2021 and it’s been gradually getting deeper and deeper since then.

To mine gold from the pit, employees drill approximately 200 holes roughly 16 centimetres wide and five metres deep, and fill them with 277 kilograms of liquid explosives that resembles soft cheese like Cheez Whiz.

Once every four days, the pit is cleared and blown up.

“It’s like every little kid’s dream, you know, making things go boom,” said one of the employees Nunatsiaq News spoke to on site.

Then, workers use excavators to collect the ore.

‘Boots in the ground’

A view of one of the tunnels in Meliadine’s  underground system that goes as deep as 600 metres. (Photo courtesy of Agnico Eagle)

Most of the ore at Meliadine is sourced from underground. The system some employees refer to as the “underground hotel” goes 600 metres down via five-by-five-metre horizontal tunnels.

The tunnels have 25 metres of soil between them and that’s where the underground drilling and blasting happens, which is responsible for the majority of the gold excavation.

There are elevators in the tunnels, ventilation systems and secure rooms where workers can hide in case of emergency.

Even though there are some sensors and alarms that can be monitored in the control room on the ground, people above ground are “mostly blind” to what is happening beneath them and rely heavily on the “boots in the ground,” said one of the employees in the control room.

From ore to gold

The process plant at the Meliadine gold mine crushes ore into a flour-like substance to later extract gold from it. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)

When the ore is extracted, most of the pieces are smaller than one metre in diameter. The pieces are sorted by the level of gold that they contain.

Then, workers crush and grind the rocks at the process plant until they are finer than flour. Finally, the gold is extracted via a chemical reaction using cyanide solution.

After the gold is extracted, it’s melted into blocks that are not yet shiny. It’s the Royal Canadian Mint that buys and polishes them.

Agnico Eagle uses planes to ship the bars from the mine site, but staff on site wouldn’t disclose the transportation process for security reasons.

  • A view of the open pit at the Meliadine gold mine near Rankin Inlet on Oct. 2. (Photo by Arty Sarkisian)
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(9) Comments:

  1. Posted by Angut on

    Resource extraction should restart five years from now, when we can fully benefit from the resources on our land.

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    • Posted by Benefit now on

      Go to the mine get a job, keep it and retire comfortably. But if you’re on SA your already retired. How could I be so silly.

      • Posted by John on

        How do people apply for available jobs at meliadine camp division

  2. Posted by facepalm on

    How much ore is crushed and processed to get 57 millions tonnes of gold?

    Gotta love how when an iron ore mine does it, everyone looses their minds. Gold requires heavy chemical processing. The iron ore at Mary River requires zero chemical processing.

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  3. Posted by Gideon Aliktiluk on

    Congratulations to Meliadine including all its employees 👏 who works tirelessly rotation to rotation
    Including the human rights counselors thanks for keeping everyone safe at minesites & general supervisors hats off to y’all 🫡

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    • Posted by John on

      Congrats,AEM, more Cash for the KIA, to spend travelling First class, fancy hotels, and hiring relatives .

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