YOUNG-DAVIDSON MINE

The Young-Davidson mine is among Canada’s largest underground Gold mining operations, located in Northern Ontario, Canada. The project is situated within the south western section of the Abitibi Greenstone Belt, a major Gold producing, geological province globally. Jake Davidson identified the Young-Davidson prospect around 1910 which led to Gold production between 1934 and 1956 of close to a million ounces from two past producing mines. The Young-Davidson open pit mine achieved commercial production on September 1, 2012 by Aurico Gold which merged with Alamos Gold in 2015. A much larger underground project subsequently broke ground to mine the large, relatively low grade but continuous, Young-Davidson ore body through bulk tonnage, low cost mining methods. On October 31, 2013, the Company declared commercial production at the Young-Davidson underground mine following the commissioning of the shaft hoisting system. Open pit mining ceased in June 2014 upon depletion of the pit reserve. Today, the Young-Davidson mine has a reserve base of over 3 million ounces of Gold, grading at around 2-3 g of gold per ton of ore and a life of mine in the order of 13 years.

The Young Davidson underground mine has been designed for low operating costs through the use of large, modern equipment. Extensive gravity movement of ore and waste through raises, ore and waste passes and shaft hoisting, results in minimal ore and waste re-handling. High productivity bulk mining methods and paste backfill have been implemented in the mine and the main mining method today is transvers longhole stoping with 30 meter sub levels. The mine operates scooptrams to load, haul and transfer stope production to the ore pass system from where it is hoisted to the surface via 18 ton skips. Roughly 7000 tons of ore being processed daily at the Young-Davidson mill and processing plant.

Sika-King has been strongly involved with this project and provides solutions to reinforce the extensive ore and waste handling system of the mine, including ore and waste passes, ore bins and silos, chutes and vent raises as well as general ground support works using King shotcrete solutions. Alamos Gold and the Young-Davidson team decided to use a highly specialized King shotcrete system for the lining of these critical mine infrastructure components. A successful lining and fortification of these structures is critical to ensure a long service life of these components to provide an undisrupted operation structural shotcrete steel fibers reinforced with 7 d. flexural strengths of 320 J at 40 mm deflection (ASTMC1550), early compressive strength >0.6 MPa at 1 hour. A 38 mm thick smooth finishing layer of shotcrete without fibers is required for the application of a waterproofing membrane.

• Rapid early strength development of shotcrete
• High final strength
• High abrasion- and impact resistance of the sprayed concrete 
• Efficient, flexible and reliable shotcrete equipment that can be handled easily even if access is limited and confined
• Packaging that allows efficient handling and transport underground to the point of use
• Fast responding support team and site support whenever needed