Thompson Creek Metals is going to hire the first of its complement of 360 full-time employees before the end of the year, as it pushes ahead to complete its $1.3-billion Mount Milligan mine in northern B.C. by 2013.
It expects to have about 50 of its own employees that will operate the mine this year, and about 150 by the middle of next year, company officials told an overflowing room of 150 at the Coast Inn of the North on Wednesday evening.
"It will move up fairly quickly over the next two years," Thompson Creek Metals official Wes Carson told the audience during its semi-annual community update.
He explained that about one year before the mine begins operating, workers and equipment will be needed to strip dirt to get to the copper and gold ore-bearing material.
The complement of full-time employees are separate from the expected peak of 700 people who will help build the mine.
There are about 350 people already working on the construction of the mine, which includes building the tailings dam, 30 metres in height at one point, and already holding back water.
Christy Smith, Thompson Creek's superintendent of community affairs for the mine project, said they are trying to hire as many local people as possible. Local is defined as including the communities of Prince George, Vanderhoof, Mackenzie, Fort St. James and the First Nation communities of McLeod Lake and Nak'azdli, she said.
So far, the work force is about 30 per cent, she said.
But the company has worked with the College of New Caledonia to set up training programs, encouraging people to take the training if they want to work at the mine.
The mine, which is providing the first new industrial jobs in north-central B.C. in more than a decade, is expected to operate for 22 years or more.
Thompson Creek, a Denver, Colo.-based company which already operates the Endako molybdenum mine west of Prince George, recently purchased the Mount Milligan mine from Terrane Metals for $700 million.
Carson said the company wants Mount Milligan to be its flagship, and expects the mine to operate longer than 22 years.
"There's a real incentive to build this mine as quickly as possible with metal prices where they are," noted Carson.
The company was accepting resumes, on behalf of construction contractors at the meeting.
Colby Tedford, 21, had come to check out the immediate job opportunities as a labourer, but he said he was impressed with the company's presentation and would consider a long-term job at the mine. "It looks like a great work environment," he said of the presentation, which included video of a day-in-the-life of the mine under construction. "I am definitely interested," said Tedford, who is planning to go to school as well.
Many of the questions for the Thompson Creek officials centered around the fact that there will be no camp on site for workers once the mine is in operation. (There is a camp during construction).
Instead, workers will be bused in from Mackenzie and Fort St. James, 90 kilometres from the mine site.
The update session gave a detailed update of the construction progress at the mine site, which includes completing 60 per cent of a 90-kilometre power line, land clearing, and completion of the construction camp. Thompson Creek expects to begin pouring concrete
this month, and has already taken delivery of some steel for the buildings.
