'Full speed ahead' for Victoria Mine, says KGHM manager

KGHM estimates the new mine site contains 14.2 million tonnes of resources. The inferred resources include 700 million pounds of copper, 700 million pounds of Nickel and 3.5 million ounces of platinum group elements.

“Everybody working on the project is fully confident we have a world-class ore deposit and a very strong business case,” said Eagles.

KGHM's original plan was to sink two mine shafts at the site – an initial exploration shaft, and a second larger shaft for production – but in the last six to eight months, the company decided instead to go with one larger mine shaft.

Eagles said the single large mine shaft would be cheaper to build, and would get production done earlier.

In a presentation to the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce in May 2014, Mark Frayne, KGHM's manager of project controls for the Victoria Mine, said the first mine shaft – still planned at the time – was due to be completed by 2017, and the second production shaft would be done by 2019.

Eagles said with the new plan, KGHM is still on track to complete the single shaft by late 2019.

But Victoria Mine has not yet received full project funding. Eagles said he expects that to happen by May or June 2015.

“We're actively progressing the engineering to the point where we can go to the corporation and say, 'Here's our feasibility study, here's the business case; are you going to fund the project?'” he said.

In Frayne's 2014 presentation to the Sudbury Chamber of Commerce, the timeline for infrastructure construction on the mine site was late 2013 to late 2015.

Under the initial plan – with an initial exploration mine shaft – definition drilling was expected to occur in 2017 and 2018.

But Eagles said those dates were always subject to change.

“Any dates that have been floated out there for production were very preliminary dates,” he said.

Victoria Mine is expected to employ between 150 and 300 people in full production, KGHM said.