New St. Lawrence fluorspar mine owner eyes November for long-awaited restart
CBC
Hiring is expected to begin in a few weeks, and production could resume by November as a new owner predicts a bright future for the idle fluorspar mine in St. Lawrence.
"I've got one of the highest hit rates in the industry, meaning taking on a project and taking it through to success," Rudolph de Bruin boasted when asked by reporters Tuesday whether he can succeed in St. Lawrence, where others have failed.
"I'm not working hard to have failures," he added.
All eyes were glued to de Bruin as he walked to the microphone during a much-anticipated news conference at the St. Lawrence town hall.
The South African lawyer and well-connected mining executive is a director with a Singapore-based private equity firm called AMED Funds, which has more than US $1.4B in assets under management, including a fluorspar mine in South Africa that will be operated in tandem with the mine in St. Lawrence.
De Bruin said operating both mines as a "partnership" will make AMED "a world class player in fluorspar."
AMED, through a newly created subsidiary called Fluorspar Holdings PTE Ltd., has purchased Canada Fluorspar Inc., the former operator of the St. Lawrence mine, for $25 million. The sale was approved last week by the Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court following a 15-month insolvency process, and was formalized just prior to the official announcement Tuesday in St. Lawrence.
"We're here for a long time," de Bruin said.
The St. Lawrence mine closed in February 2022 and was granted bankruptcy protection after the company ran out of cash. At the time, it employed roughly 280 people, mostly residents of the Burin Peninsula.
Many of those workers have since left the province for work, and Burin-Grand Bank MHA Paul Pike said he's confident many of them will soon be able to get jobs at the reactivated mine.
"He said all I wanted to hear," Pike said of the de Bruin's pledge to operate the mine for at least two decades, and search for other deposits that would extend the lifespan even longer.
"You can come home," Pike said of the many former mine workers who have dispersed across Canada.
St. Lawrence Mayor Kevin Pittman said Tuesday's announcement was positive, and "we are very happy about the completion of the sale process."
Andrew Parsons, minister of industry, energy and technology, said the provincial government took exceptional steps to ensure a new owner was found for the mine, and that its restart will being benefits and jobs to St. Lawrence and beyond.