“Definitely the capital phase is work that we’ll be sending out to be done, which is the boring of the holes for the ventilation and then also the upgrades on the backfill system and the power system,” he said. “It’s kind of specialized work. It’s tendered for a short period of time. It’s big machines but sometimes it’s not a big workforce.”
By adding ventilation and power to make more drilling possible and increased backfill capacity speeding up the process of filling in mined areas and moving on to the next block, the project will increase the amount of ore that comes out of Thompson. There is also substantial exploration drilling happening, using five surface drills and three underground drills, though at times the total number may rise as high as 10, Annett said.