Hi Sudbury, I think you are right to worry about the future of the mine in Sudbury. I live in a paper town where the company had a rich antiquated collective agreement. Inflexibility and high cost in a declining market shut the mill down after a hundred years. Vale are constructing a new mill to process Voiseys Bay nickel. There is an opportunity for the Vale to start off on the right foot with this new facility to have a collective agreement that keeps labor and benefits competitive. Assuming it will take some time before the markets fully recover to previous highs, this new plant will be the priority due to its current technology that is more productive and incurs less maintenance. In the end, profitability trumps history and community loyalty. While I sympathize with your situation in Sudbury, I fear that your operation is a dinasaur like the many paper mills in this country that have been shut down. The ore is deep in the ground, infrastructure is old and probably with high maintenance costs and from what you are suggesting the labor costs are extremely high with an inflexible union agreement, "deja vu all over again" to me.

The other concern you should have is new properties like the one we have here at NOT have the potential to be operated much more economically as well. This bodes well for our investment but when developed, will take up another chunk of the market share that may displace potential production at Sudbury due to high costs. There is no doubt in my mind that a prolonged strike at Sudbury will be devastaing to Sudbury but will improve our chances at NOT.