Aging infrastructure to blame for impending closure of Dome gold mine in Timmins

The city of Timmins, Ont., is losing one of its gold mining operations.

Porcupine Gold Mines (PGM) announced Tuesday that its Dome underground operation will be shutting down in December.

The decision to shut down was difficult, but necessary says MarcLauzier,the mine's general manager.

• Goldcorp closes century-old gold mine near Timmins

• Vale shutting down Stobie Mine

He says aging infrastructure made it difficult for the mineto remain profitable, adding there is not enough reserves left to make any significant investment.

"It's been opened since 1910.The remaining resources are a lot more challenging given that the infrastructure is getting old. The productivities are very difficult, and we don'thave the grades to sustain the profitability anymore."

Lauziersays the company is doing what it can to help the 140 employees who work at the site.

"So about 12 per cent of our work force. That includes someunionizedhourly workers, some staff and some contract workers."

He says part of why the companyannounced the closurenow was so they would have a few months to figure out what to do to save as many jobs as theycan.

"Part of it is we want tooptimizethe PGM operations, so that we can attract investment from the company, to do some of the bigger projects we want to do," saysLauzier.

"We just have to show the company we can operate this project wisely, and this isone of those decisions we have to make in order to make that happen."

Parent companyGoldcorpsays it is still committed to its other operations in theTimminsarea.