Congratulations to LaRonde’s paste backfill team who are this year’s winners of the Michel Letourneau award.

Team members Édith Lafontaine, Planning Engineer, Ronald Thibault, Mining Technician, Martin Sasseville, Mine General Supervisor and Serge Lecomte, Mill General Supervisor were recently in Toronto for a ceremony to recognize their efforts.

The award is named in honour of our retired colleague Michel Letourneau, who was one of Agnico Eagle’s most enthusiastic and active champions for leadership and innovation, particularly in health and safety. The award recognizes outstanding achievements in teamwork, productivity improvements, cost control, innovation, accident prevention or health and safety.

For this year’s winners, their achievements in improving the paste backfill system at Agnico Eagle’s LaRonde mine began as a discussion among colleagues from different departments about some of the issues and concerns they were seeing, including miscommunication and the absence of coordination across the various functions.

After gaining support for their ideas the team embarked on a number of trials to see what could be done and ultimately their efforts led to the development of a completely new approach for managing the paste backfill process and the creation of a new role and department to oversee the coordination of activities.

Their new process has a number of key advantages, including:

• Significant cost reduction – savings of $600,000 per year by optimizing the amount of cement used in the paste backfill mixture;
• Increased productivity – increase of more than three per cent in paste plant utilization and hourly throughput, from 201 tonnes per hour to 207 tonnes per hour;
• Improved safety – a modification to the paste line now enables the line be cleared more quickly in the event that it blocks and without exposing workers to harm; and
• Positive change to environmental footprint – an additional 85,000 tonnes of waste rock material is now being sent underground as paste backfill instead of to our tailings facilities.

When asked to comment on their experience working together on this initiative, the successful outcome and also winning the Michel Letourneau award they were quick to point out a number of key things they had each learned.

“On a daily basis we all work hard to achieve our own department’s objectives, be it in terms of health and safety, cost reductions or ensuring continued emphasis on sustainable development,” said Édith, Planning Engineer. “This makes today’s recognition heart-warming and also very motivating, encouraging us to not only continue our own work but especially to keep working together for success.”

“Taking the time to understanding the challenges faced by each of the departments was definitely what allowed everyone to jointly put their shoulders to the wheel and achieve the desired objectives,” agreed Serge, the Mill General Supervisor.

"The ideas put forth by the group formed the basis for the improvement,” said Ronald, Mining Technician. “But it was working together as a team to implement and track the results of the optimizations that created this success for the company.”

“What is important to take away from this experience is the importance of working together as a multi-disciplinary and inter-departmental team,” agrees Martin, the Mine General Supervisor.

“That’s the key to success!”

Congratulations to the entire team on their successful achievement!

What is Paste Backfill?

• When you mine a block of ore underground and remove the ore, a void is left.
• Before mining an adjacent ore body, either a pillar must be left in place, or that void must be filled to ensure that the opening will remain stable. Since leaving pillars between the stopes means leaving a lot of gold in the ground it is better to fill the void whenever possible.
• Mining the ore generates waste rock (broken rock not containing gold that was removed to access the ore), tailings (ground-up ore that comes from the processing plant after the gold has been removed). These can be used to fill the void however, without a binding agent this material is loose and can move unless it is further confined in some way.
• Cement and slag are therefore used as binding agents. When you combine waste rock and cement it creates cemented rockfill and the combination of tailings, cement and slag creates paste backfill. Both of these then harden into solid materials which fill the void and keep it stable.