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Three remote sites. 53 days. 2,653 truckloads. 37.7M litres of fuel. Zero injuries.

The annual ice road resupply program for De Beers in Canada was extremely successful in 2016 for De Beers’ Victor Mine in northern Ontario and to the Gahcho Kué Project and Snap Lake Mine in the Northwest Territories.

Combined, De Beers coordinated the inbound transport of 1,953 truckloads of fuel and cargo to three sites, with an additional 700 combined back haul loads removing materials scheduled for recycling and other non-essential equipment.

At Victor, the last of the 482 cargo trucks returned to Moosonee on March 6 to officially end a campaign that saw 269 cargo loads head into the mine and 213 depart the mine for backhaul to the Moosonee Yard Operations staging facility. In addition, 10.7 million litres of fuel were also brought into the mine on 314 fuel trucks.

Victor Logistics Superintendent Mike Lacourciere said the team deserves a tremendous amount of credit for making up time while not compromising safety.

“Our team and community partners really stayed focused when the late winter season pushed back our usual construction start, which requires ice built up over 400 km. Surprisingly, we also had to overcome a lack of snow to build our ice bridges, not a challenge one would normally expect in the Far North of Ontario.”

In the Northwest Territories, this winter road was critical to the final year of construction at the Gahcho Kué Project. Altogether there were 1,635 loads of cargo, fuel and equipment completed by March 23. In all 22 million litres of fuel were hauled to site and there were 252 backhauls.

Although it was placed on care and maintenance on December 4, 2015, 166 trucks carrying five million litres of fuel and 56 truckloads of freight arrived at Snap Lake Mine by March 23, 2016. There were also 235 truckloads of equipment and other material backhauled out of the site.