TIMMINS

Falconbridge Limited Kidd Creek Metallurgical Division was located in Timmins, Ontario, Canada. Ore was railed from the mine to the plant site for milling and concentrating, copper smelting and refining, zinc roasting and electro-winning and other operations.

Around 1975, Texasgulf Inc., (Bs original owner), decided to process their copper concentrates to cathode copper.  After examining several competing processes, Texasgulf selected the Mitsubishi Process for smelting technology.

Operations started in 1981, with 60,000 MTPY production capacity.  Then in 1985, with test work and design recommendations from Mitsubishi, production was progressively increased to 125,000 MTPY by oxygen enrichment.  In 2001, the Kidd smelter produced 131,000 tonnes of anodes from concentrates, its highest annual production recorded.

A point noteworthy of mention is that in 1990, the Canadian Government issued a control order requiring that by January 1994, all smelters must reduce SO2 emissions by at least 50%.  Kidd Creek was the only copper smelting operation exempted from this control order, since Environment Canada judged the site control of SO2 emissions to be more than adequate. This justified the 1975 selection and avoided the enormous refit costs required of the older smelting operations. in 2010, the plant was shutdown due to the drain of mine.