Duck Pond

Teck’s Duck Pond mine, located 28 km south of Millertown and 100 km southwest of Grand Falls-Windsor, is a tight -knit operation with a ‘family feel” and a strong culture of safety.  The day-and-night shifts know every member of the crews on the other side of the clock.  Employees aren’t just colleagues they are also friends and neighbours. 

That close connection makes everyone feel that safety is a personal responsibility. It’s a values-based approach to safety that is also at the core of Teck’s Courageous Safety Leadership (CSL) Program. The CSL philosophy empowers every employee to be a safety leader and to play an active role in their own safety and the safety of those around them.

That theme of safety leadership is echoed in the safety video that every visitor to the mine must see which features real-life employees working in and around the mine. The messages they give are sincere and heartfelt as they talk about the mine and the safety of its workers and visitors. It’s a personal connection that contributes to making Duck Pond a truly extraordinary site to work at.

With more than 270 people working in two shifts, the Duck Pond operation is Newfoundland and Labrador’s only producing copper-zinc-silver and gold mine and has been in commercial production since April 2007.

The mine is an underground operation, utilizing 15% grade ramp access and underground mining methods. Uncrushed ore is trucked to a surface stockpile then fed through a crusher to a coarse ore bin.  The mill processes 1800 tpd using a SAG mill, ball mill and flotation circuit to produce separate copper and zinc concentrates.

Concentrates are trucked 400 km to a storage and shipping facility at the Port of St. George’s in western Newfoundland. The operation has an on-going exploration program and is scheduled to bring its Boundary Deposit open-pit phase into production this year.