Hey Miners,

I was mining around and I found an interesting read. The Balmat No. 4 Zinc Mine is to be reopened in 2006 because of high metal prices. The zinc mine is located in Balmat, NY. The zinc mine was originally owned by the St. Joe Resources Co. The mine was at least 2,500' deep.

Below I listed to links for further reading

This is part of the article I found on the mine:
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- HudBay Minerals Inc., a Canadian zinc producer spun off last year by Anglo American Plc, will reopen a mine after prices for the metal rose to an eight-year high. Output at the Balmat No. 4 mine in New York state may resume in the second quarter of 2006. Follow link below to read more
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... fer=canada
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2005NE/finalp ... _83273.htm

It would take 5hr’s 38 minutes form The Ironminers.com Headquarters to reach the mining area. Who wants to visit the mine?
The electrical contracting company that I work for has felt the pain of the higher metal prices. So I say MINE ON BOYS and lets keep the metal prices down!

Hope you enjoy the read,

Miner Bond

Good stuff. I am glad that they are still evaluating the project, but they have been saying that for quite some time now. This mine was originally owned by St. Lawrence Zinc Company until they had financial difficulties and it was puchased by OntZinc of Canada. The OntZinc bought HudBay Minerals Inc. and renamed their company to HudBay Minerals Inc. All this time they have been holding onto the Balmat mine. From the research I have done (HudBay is a public company - you can read their financial statements), they have been spending quite a bit of money on maintenance on the Balmat mine. I would imagine since the mine is not producing, that they are still funding the operation of the mine pumps.

The mine has been closed since 2001. I believe there are about 2 million tons of mineable zinc in the reserves of the current operatable shaft (No 4). There is still another 3 million tons underground that may require additional shafts to be sunk. This would be a very interesting mine to perform a study on, but they use more modern mining methods in this mine. No ore cars or anything like that, they use very large trucks to mine this.

www.hudbayminerals.com

Greg,

Yes I agree that it's very interesting read. Thanks for the addition information that you found out. Let me know if you find anymore info. Thanks

Miner Bond

Actually I studied that operation a long time ago before opening the site, It seems to be an interesting site to study, but it is much more modern than what we are use to. We are use to our smaller train tunnels and drifts, sometimes thin width stopes, and ducking at times when this mine is designed for LARGE dump trucks to be driven through. I don't know if they use rail anywhere inside of the mine (would doubt it), but I know they do use these large trucks, Older Zinc mines like the Sterling or Franklin mines used rail entirely. Even the drivable loaders and scoopers used Rail on those mines.