After three months on the job, Vale’s latest head of Manitoba Operations Gary Eyres spoke at the Thompson Chamber of Commerce meeting May 29.
Throughout his 44-minute presentation, Eyres outlined what Vale’s Manitoba Operations look like right now and where they are headed in the future.
The Australian went over Vale’s status as a strictly mining and milling operation in Thompson since its smelter and refinery shut down for good back in late 2018.
However, Eyres said the concentrate load-out facility completed about a year ago allows the company to ship out 14 to 16 trucks’ worth of concentrate to Sudbury, Ontario for processing every day.
Outside of the $80 million they sank into building this load-out facility, Eyres revealed that Vale also invested $20 million in their underground mining operations last year.
Moving into the future, Eyres is looking to invest in expanded underground initiatives that will take the company into previously unexplored areas, which could result in up to $6.3 billion in wages between now and 2045 – which works out to about $250 million per year.
“We’re going to see it become a much larger mining operation,” he said. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to have a huge number of more employees and I don’t want to give any misapprehensions and say we’re going to go back to a refinery and smelter. We’re always going to be a mining and milling operation from this time on … but we can be one of the best there is in the world.”
Eyres also echoed his one of his predecessors – Alistair Ross – by saying that the emerging electric cars market will result in an increased demand for Thompson’s high-grade nickel, since it is a key component in producing the batteries used to power these vehicles.
“If you look at the Bank of America, they’re saying by 2030 they expect around 50 million electric vehicles to be on the road at that point,” he said. “And if you have a look at 2030, we’re looking at 1.8 million tones of nickel being required just around the production of batteries alone.”
Manitoba Operations’ new boss also sought to put some of the public’s fears to rest, saying no more layoffs are planned for 2019 and that the company’s employee numbers will remain at around 850. Vale lost about a third of its Thompson workforce last year.
Eyres also announced that Vale is providing the City of Thompson with an additional $600,000 on top of the negotiated grant-in-lieu amount of $3 million that it was committed to providing this year.
The city still hasn’t yet said what it is going to do with that extra money.
Otherwise, Eyres told chamber members that he is excited to take on this leadership role, especially now that the company is looking to dig into unexplored territory in Thompson.
“That was my reason for moving here,” he said. “I truly believe that the opportunity to expand our operations is there and I want to be a part of expanding that operation.”
Eyres is the third person to oversee Vale’s Manitoba Operations since vice-president Mark Scott’s position was eliminated in July 2018, He follows in the footsteps of Vale North Atlantic mining heads Alistair Ross, and Mike McCann. Stacy Kennedy and Gary Annett have served as interim mining managers.
Eyres has decades of experience in both open pit and underground mining, having worked for companies like BHP, South32 and Mount Isa Mines Limited in the past.
