Vale Thompson announced yesterday the suspension of operations at Birchtree Mine. Vice President of Manitoba operations Mark Scott says the decision was made within the last couple of weeks. He explains they are looking at the one year annual plan for 2018 for all parts of the business and putting together this years version of their five year and life of mine plans and through that exercise it became evident that given where the price of nickel is at the moment and is expected to be over the next couple of years there was no production scenario in which Birchtree would generate positive cash flow for the business over the near term.
The mine will be placed on care and maintenance as of October 1st. Roughly 200 employees will be impacted by the closure.
