Birchtree Mine is an underground
nickelNickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...
mineMining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
, owned and operated by Vale Inco in the city of
ThompsonThompson is a city in northern Manitoba. As the "Hub of the North" it serves as the regional trade and service centre of northern Manitoba. Thompson is located north of the Canada – United States border, north of the provincial capital of Winnipeg, and is northeast of Flin Flon...
,
ManitobaManitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
,
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. It lies in the nickel containing
Thompson BeltThe Thompson Belt, also referred to as the Thompson Nickel Belt, is an Archean and early Proterozoic geologic feature in Manitoba, Canada. It contains gneiss related to deformation of the Trans-Hudson orogeny....
, a geologic feature associated with the
Circum-Superior BeltThe Circum-Superior Belt is a widespread Paleoproterozoic large igneous province in the Canadian Shield of Northern, Western and Eastern Canada. It extends more than from northeastern Manitoba through northwestern Ontario, southern Nunavut to northern Quebec...
large igneous provinceA Large Igneous Province is an extremely large accumulation of igneous rocks—intrusive, extrusive, or both—in the earth's crust...
throughout the
Superior cratonThe Superior craton forms the core of the Canadian Shield at the heart of the North American continent. It extends from Quebec in the east to eastern Manitoba in the west...
.
Birchtree mine originally opened in 1965 until 1978 when it was put in "standby" until 1988. The mine reopened again in 1989.
In 2000 Inco authorized US$48 million to deepen the mine to 4100 feet (1,250 m), expanding production to 3,800 tons per day.
