The operation consists of a conventional surface mining method using an owner mining approach with electric hydraulic shovels, wheel loaders and trucks in a bulk mining approach with 14 m benches. The primary objective is to sustain the mill feed every year at a rate of 41.9 Mtpy within ore quality constraints. Bloom Lake is an owneroperator open pit mine with the outsourcing of certain support activities such as explosives manufacturing, blasthole loading, pre-split drilling and overburden removal.
Mine Designs
Open Pit Stages
To avoid confusion between the Phase I and Phase II plant expansion, the term “mining stage” is preferred instead of the common “mining phase” to represent pushbacks.
Mining of the Bloom Lake project is planned with 13 sub-stages in three pits:
- Bloom West (BW) with six sub-stages;
- Bloom Pignac (BP) with three sub-stages;
- Bloom Chief’s Peak (BC) with four sub-stages.
The West Pit contains 41% of total tonnage and 34% of the ore, for a strip ratio of 1.34. The ore quality is the highest in the mine, and the iron mineralization is hematite.
The Pignac Pit contains 8% of the ore at a strip ratio of 1.34. The mineralization becomes more complex than the West Pit, but less so than Chief’s Peak. It can be mined completely independently of Chief’s Peak, even though both sections connect.
Chief’s Peak contains 58% of the ore and has more complex iron mineralization (includi ........
