Smelter likely to be restarted by end of January

Posted By Carol Mulligan

Updated 1 hour ago

t is a "safe bet" that Vale Inco Ltd. will restart its Copper Cliff Smelter Complex, at least in part, by the end of the month.

The complex has been idle for about eight months — two months for maintenance and six months because of a strike by 3,000 unionized production and maintenance workers, members of United Steelworkers Local 6500.

One of two furnaces at the smelter has been restarted and the oxygen plant that fuels the smelting process is being derimed, said Vale Inco spokesman Steve Ball this week.

The smelter furnace runs on oxygen, not gas, although the No. 1 furnace is being heated with gas right now, said Ball.

He described the deriming at the oyxgen plant as "like thawing out your freezer."

"We need oxygen to smelt ore through the one furnace we have heated now," said Ball.

"We needed to start the oxygen plant in order to provide that supply."

The deriming process began Monday, and takes about 10-14 days, around the clock, to complete, he said.

"Once this is done it can supply oxygen to the furnace."

Ball said it is not as simple as "adding numbers" to predict when s smelting will begin, "so while there is no firm date set the fact, that the smelter should be running by

the end of the month is a pretty safe bet."

Vale Inco announced in the early days of the strike that it intended to resume partial productions at several operations. It has been producing ore at Levack's Coleman Mine and at Garson Mine, and processing it for copper at Clarabelle Mill.

Nickel concentrate is left after the milling process, Ball explained. That concentrate and nickel concentrate stockpiled before the strike will feed the smelter.

Ball has insisted Vale Inco would not restart the smelter until it felt it was safe to do so.

Thursday, he told The Star: "We'll do it when we're ready. When the safety and all the right people are in place, the smelter will restart."

Nickel Belt MPP France Gelinas sought assurances from Vale Inco before Christmas that it would not restart the smelter during the holiday season. The New Democrat member said many Copper Cliff constituents were calling her expressing fears that the smelter might not be operated safely.

"We're going to do that. We said we're going to start the mines. We said we`re going to start the mill, and we've done those. We said we were going to start the smelter and we are," he said.

When asked how many people would be working in the smelter, Ball would not say. "We'll make sure we have the right number."

Read more in the Saturday Star.