It took nearly a quarter a century and changed hands twice, but Quintette is back up and running.
Conuma Resources—who bought the mine from Teck Resources in 2023 for $120 million—has spent the last few months in limbo. Conuma wrapped up production at the Wolverine Mine back in May with the hope that they would get their mining permit for Quintette by the end of that month. Instead, they’ve spent the summer getting ready for the restart, which kept getting delayed.
But on September 5, Conuma finally got the green light. “We received the permit to restart operations at Little Windy Pit, and began mining coal about noon” says Conuma CAO Brian Sullivan. “This was a very long time coming and a considerable relief.”
Sullivan says the first train is scheduled to arrive on September 11, and will hopefully be pulling the first load of coal out a day or two after that.
This is not a permit to bring the whole of Quintette up and running. Sullivan predicts that will be another few months yet. But back in 2014, when Teck was considering restarting the mine, they had a bulk sample permit for the Little Windy Pit. “That area was permitted and so we’ve applied for a limited restart of just that area,” said Sullivan back in May.
Crews have been working out at Quintette for nine months now, slowly bringing the mine back into shape for active production, which includes a new overland conveyor belt down to the processing plant.
All in all, Sullivan estimates the company has put $500-million into getting Quintette up and ready, from purchasing new equipment to getting rail loadout back into working condition.
The original Quintette coal licenses were acquired by Denison Mines between 1969 and 1970. The first coal
exploration on the property was undertaken by Denison in 1971.
In 1991, Teck took over the mine from Denison, who ran into financial difficulties. But when coal prices fell to $39/tonne in 2000, Teck made the decision to put the mine into care and maintenance.
In the early to mid 2010s, Teck seriously investigated restarting the mine, but decided against it as the company began steps towards getting out of the coal industry. In November of last year, they announced that they were selling the last remnants of their coal business.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
