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Times tough for ailing asbestos industry - Without chrysotile, there’s no space shuttle |
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At the turn of the last century, Canada was the world’s largest producer of chrysotile asbestos and the Eastern Townships was the hub of the mining industry for what was once known as white gold.
The fibrous mineral, first discovered in the region by Joseph Fecteau in 1876, led to the birth of Thetford Mines and Asbestos, itself baptized Shipton then renamed for the rock that brought such population growth and economic wealth to the area.
But a century later, the rosy picture had faded. The chrysotile asbestos mining industry has gone from outright boon to virtual bust as market forces and the political push to ban asbestos have made it increasingly difficult for Canadian producers to remain competitive.
Back in the 1970s, when asbestos production reached its peak in the the Townships, Canada was still among the world’s largest producers of the mineral. More than 4,000 miners were working at eight different mines in and around Thetford Mines and Asbestos.
In 1979 Canadian chrysotile mines shipped 1.5-million metric tonnes of the fiber to some five dozen countries. By 1997, the total had dropped to 420,000 tonnes. Today total exports have dwindled to some 200,000 tonnes.
Over the past few years, fewer than 800 asbestos miners work a few months a year in three remaining mines. Soon there will be a few hundred employees at a single chrysotile mine — the last in Canada.
Chrysotile is currently mined from deposits concentrated in the Eastern Townships in a 100-km-long deposit of the mineral which extends from the town of Asbestos in the west to East Broughton in the east. There were once thriving mines in Newfoundland and British Columbia, but they closed up shop in the last two decades.
Chrysotile, or white asbestos, is one of a half dozen different forms of the fibrous silicate mineral that was widely used in household construction materials and other products because of its flame-retardant nature as well as its strength and resistance to electricity and chemical damage. Here in the Townships the roads were literally paved with asbestos, which was used to extend the life of asphalt.
Abestos banned
Use of the mineral has become heavily regulated and in many countries, outright banned, since it was discovered that prolonged inhalation can lead to diseases such as asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma.
A French ban on asbestos imports in the late 1990s was followed by a sweeping European ban in 2005. But one of the hardest blows to the Canadian asbestos industry came last summer when the Canadian Cancer Society called for the use and export of asbestos to be phased out for good.
The European bans, couple with a financial crisis in Asia — one of the few places where the product was in high demand — have caused a sharp decline for the once booming industry in the Townships.
While asbestos fibers has been linked to lung disease, industry experts, as well as the federal and provincial governments, argue that chrysotile-asbestos — which makes up about 99 per cent of world asbestos production today — is perfectly safe if handled properly.
Last month, the federal and provincial governments renewed financing — $200,000 a year from Quebec and $250,000 a year from Ottawa — for the Chrysotile Institute, a non-profit governmental and industry organization that advocates for the safe mining and use of chrysotile asbestos.
But while most agree that chrysotile is less harmful than other forms of asbestos, it is still a carcinogen according to the World Health Organization. And despite steadfast efforts by both levels of government to prop up the Canadian industry, the downward decline continues.
At the beginning of April, newspapers reported that some 230 part-time miners at the Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos will be heading back to work for what could be the last time this May. In July, the oldest North American open pit mine, which has been in operation since 1879, will cease production indefinitely.
That’s because there is no more chrysotile asbestos available for surface mining, said Jeffrey Mine president Bernard Coulombe. To get more the operation will have to go underground, he explained, noting some $30 million in investments and two years of work would be needed to start extracting the subterranean ore.
The mothballing of the mine will mean permanent layoffs not only for 230 mine workers who have been working about 15 weeks a year since 2003. It will also mean lost jobs for dozens of technicians, engineers and office staff.
That fate has already befallen 140 miners and other employees of the Bell Mine in Thetford Mines, which shut down operations on March 29.
The Bell Mine, owned by the Mazarin Mining Corporation and operated by LAB Chrysotile Inc., had been in exploitation since 1959 on Notre Dame Street on the outskirts of Thetford Mines.
The Bell Mine was the last underground chrysotile mine in Quebec. In the ’60s two other underground mines were in operation there, but they have long since boarded up their mining shafts.
In mid-March, Mazarin president John Le Bouthilier told The Record the company had no plans to operate the mine once the lease to LAB Chrysotile expired. A few days later, on March 19, the Mazarin subsidiary which owned and leased the Bell Mine filed for bankruptcy protection and assigned all of its assets to its trustee, Raymond Chabot Inc.
“After considering several avenues, the subsidiary has concluded that its limited financial resources did not allow it to operate the mine or to meet its financial obligations on an ongoing basis,” the company announced in a statement.
Mazarin Mining Corporation is a Quebec City based holding company that acquired the Société nationale de l’amiante when the public corporation established by the Parti Québécois to run Quebec’s asbestos mines was privatized by the Liberal government of Robert Bourassa in 1992.
Mazarin pulled out of the chrysotile sector last August when LAB Chrysotile, which was created in 1986 to operate asbestos mines in the Thetford area, also declared bankruptcy.
Mazarin’s activities now consist of the development of its mining assets, including the sale of land, buildings and mining equipment, and the development of the tailings. Its assets include the former BC1, BC2, King, Beaver, and Normandin mines.
Mining school
While the Bell Mine won’t mine asbestos anymore, the town of Thetford Mines hopes the last asbestos operation in town can be reused somehow to maintain the heritage of the mine and some jobs.
“Workers have willed us this heritage. We must safeguard it,” said Mayor Luc Berthold, noting everything must be done to preserve the mining facilities.
Berthold told The Record a variety of possibilities are being examined, including the creation of an asbestos mining interpretation centre and a mining school that could train some 400 miners a year.
Recent efforts have concentrated on the latter, especially since the provincial Charest government’s recent budget promised to open mining schools as a way to retrain thousands of laid off forestry workers in that ailing industry.
While asbestos mining is shrinking, Quebec’s mining association president, Dan Tolgyesi, recently noted the industry is booming and will need 5,000 to 6,000 new workers over the next five years, mainly in northern Quebec.
Mayor Berthold and the union representing laid off asbestos workers have already approached the Commission scolaire and the Collège de Thetford Mines as well as the Centre local de développement (CLD) to discuss the idea. Berthold has also discussed it with Municipal and Regional Development Minister Nathalie Normandeau. He reported that Normandeau, who is also deputy premier, was receptive to the idea.
Yves Poulin, head of one of the local Steelworkers union, said for that for a mining school to work, they must continue pumping water out of the mine to prevent flooding and preserve underground equipment. Because that is a costly operation, the town and its partners will have to act fast.
Poulin admits the school will have an uphill fight against negative perceptions because of the health risks associated with asbestos mining. But, he counters that asbestos can be mined safely if rules on controlling dust are applied and, he adds, the Bell Mine uses the same methods as used when mining copper, zinc and gold.
Poulin told The Record that the short-term impact of the Mazarin’s numbered company declaring bankruptcy is to freeze all of the equipment. He said that’s good news.
“Before that we were concerned that Mazarin was selling and transferring equipment,” he said. “Now everything is frozen, but it’s important to have a quick decision to preserve the mining equipment if we want the mining school project to work.”
Poulin notes that future of the Bell Mine is in the hands of the bankruptcy liquidators. The main creditor is the city of Thetford Mines.
One surviving mine
The shut down of the Bell Mine and the imminent mothballing of the Jeffrey Mine will leave a single chrysotile mine operating in the Townships — the Lac d’Amiante mine — known to many as the Black Lake mine, even if the facilities are located mainly in the neighbouring town of Coleraine.
LAB Chrysotile President Simon Dupéré told The Record that for the struggling company, operating a single mine just makes economic sense.
“There is only so much demand for the resource and rather than operating two mines part time, it made sense to regroup activities in a single mine,” he said.
LAB mines about 120,000 tons of asbestos a year, a fraction of the more than one million tons a year that came out of the Thetford region in the early ’70s. Sales have shrunk another 50 per cent since 2002 and workers saw their wages cut from $22 or $24 an hour to $14 to $16.
Concentrating activities at the Lac d’Amiante mine will mean some job losses, Dupéré said, noting many jobs will disappear through attrition. Of the 240 workers at both mines last month, some will retire and some will take early retirement packages, he said.
Union representative Poulin said many workers have already found employment elsewhere. And with lots of retirements anticipated this year, the union also hopes few of its members will end up on unemployment.
For the remaining miners, work should be more steady. By summertime, the Lac d’Amiante du Québec (LAQ) mine will recoup all the region’s chrysotile production — some 200,000 tonnes a year — thanks to a deal inked between the Jeffrey Mine and LAB Chrysotile.
Competitors cooperate
Last year, the two competitors merged sales teams to protect their markets from overseas competition. The creation of the Chrysotile Canada Inc. sales agency aimed at maximizing sales and saving costs.
Coulombe confirmed the LAQ mine will be providing some 60,000 tonnes of asbestos to Jeffrey Mine clients when the Asbestos mine closes down this summer.
“We knew we would be short of ore at the Jeffrey Mine,” Coulombe said, explaining the company has been slowly depleting its reserve of chrysotile from the open pit mine.
Coulombe, who hopes to reopen the Jeffrey Mine some day, said he wanted to ensure the chrysotile industry maintained the Canadian market share, which has been about 200,000 tonnes a year since the late ’90s, or about 10 per cent of the international market.
While there is a small and dwindling market for chrysotile asbestos in North America, it is still widely used in other parts of the world including China, India, North Africa and parts of Latin America.
Coulombe said the ore is mainly mixed with cement to make hard products for construction. The most common is corrugated asbestos-cement sheets or “A/C Sheets” for roofing and side walls.
Some 5,000 to 6,000 tonnes of asbestos is still used in North America, including some by the space program in the United States.
“NASA’s shuttles don’t fly without chrysotile,” he said, boasting the Jeffrey Mine supplied asbestos fibers used in the Columbia, Discovery and Atlantis space shuttles.
Even if there is a good supply of chrysotile in the Townships, increasing sales has been a near impossible task for Canadian mines. That’s because the North American market is tiny and the developing world is too distant.
“We are too far from the main markets,” said Poulin. “The Russians are on the same continent as China and India and the Brazilians have cornered the market in Latin America.
“Russia is much closer to the main markets,” agrees Coulombe, noting it is now the world’s largest producer of chrysotile asbestos.
Nevertheless Canada has maintained a small portion of the world market, which consumes some 2.2 million tonnes of chrysotile, mainly in Asian but also in parts of Mexico and Latin America and Africa.
Structural problems
LAB’s Dupéré said that even if the world demand for chrysotile has increased since 2000, Canadian asbestos mines still face structural problem.
“Our production costs are higher,” he said, noting that Canada is at a distinct disadvantage compared to asbestos producers like Russia and Brazil which are closer to emerging markets and can mine asbestos more cheaply.
But Dupéré said Canadian chrysotile mines will be able to survive if they can innovate.
“You can make profit with more than just volume sales,” he explained, noting mines must specialize in modern production methods, in high quality grades of ore, and ensure they have a market in specialized uses of chrysotile such as seals and brake lining for the aeronautics industry.
Coulombe believes rising oil prices and skyrocketing prices for competing materials will eventually mean demand for chrysotile will rise. Demand for encapsulated chrysotile manufactured products has already increased in the developing world to meet the needs for water, sewage and housing infrastructure development, he said.
Coulombe said construction materials made from petrol products, plastics and metals are costly and not ecological to manufacture. Fibro-cement, which is simply cement mixed with water and chrysotile fibers, is more environmentally friendly to produce and it lasts longer, he adds.
“The chrysotile market is bound to rebound,” he said. And when that happens the Jeffrey Mine has a virtually unlimited supply underground.
Increased demand could keep the mine going for decades, he said. The catch is, Coulombe need to find investors willing to front him some $30 million in order to exploit the buried treasure.
The longtime chief executive officer of the mine, which is now co-owned by Coulombe and a workers’ cooperative, is currently seeking financing for an underground mine project that has been on hold for many years.
In 1995, Jeffrey Mine decided to go underground and began digging an underground mining shaft. Then run by J.M. Asbestos Inc., the company invested some $140 million to build it and only 15 per cent of the construction remains to be completed.
A few years after the company started building the underground mine shaft, the bottom dropped out of the Canadian chrysotile asbestos industry.
Not only were asbestos bans multiplying throughout the world, Canadian chrysotile mines also faced rising costs and stiff competition from Asian and Latin American mining companies.
The Jeffrey and the LAB mines were forced to reduce operations after the price of the fiber dropped and their markets began dwindling.
“We lost a lot of customers to Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Brazil,” said Coulombe, noting steadfast competition forced Jeffrey into receivership in 2002. That meant the loss of some 350 jobs and a drastic reduction in pension benefits for some 1,200 retirees.
Coulombe said that for the past few years, he has tried to get employees back to work for two or three months a year.
The last hurrah
“This is probably the last,” he told The Record. Even if Coulombe finds financing for the underground operation, it will take a year to finish construction and another to start it up.
In the meantime, Coulombe insists the Jeffrey Mine is not closing down.
“We’re not closing the mine,” Coulombe said, noting the operation will simply be put under maintenance care to preserve the equipment in good running order until it can reopen.
In the meantime, the Jeffrey mine must ensure the safety of its installation, pump water out of the mine, and pay its municipal tax bills. And, because the company is still under bankruptcy protection, it must also pay $2 million a year to its creditors.
Coulombe said the company has always paid its debts and it has a reserve to cover future expenses. And, he adds, there are plans to diversify the mine site to create jobs and continue making a modest profit while hoping to relaunch mining in the coming years.
Coulombe said he hopes some of the miners will be able to get work in various industries he wants to get off the ground including an integrated waste management site that could create as many as 225 jobs.
There are also plans to start a farm fertilizer based with magnesium sulfate and to exploit a small slate quarry on the site. Each of those ventures would create 20 jobs.
He hopes to use parts of the mine site and some abandoned buildings that aren’t in use such as the machine shop.
“We want to diversify as much as possible without interfering with future underground mining operations,” he explained, noting the modern landfill site would be located in the valley surrounding by mine tailings which is dubbed by locals as The Valley of the Rocks.
But Coulombe’s ambitious plan to open a ultramodern waste management site is already hitting a major roadblock. Three weeks ago the MRC des Sources — formerly the MRC Asbestos — put strict limits on the volume of waste that can be disposed of within its borders. That would discount Coulombe’s Éco-ressources-énergie park which would require much more garbage to produce power and make massive investments worthwhile for him and his investors, the waste management company RCI Environnement.
“Our job will be to convince them that this is a far-reaching socio-economic project that will transform everything that can be transformed,” he said, noting the goal is to maximize the recycling and reuse of waste.
Coulombe said the project would be good for the town and for the whole Estrie region where several municipalities, including Sherbrooke, are in dire need of disposal sites for their waste.
Hope for the future
While the picture looks bleak here in the Townships, longtime union leader Yves Poulin said the world market is actually growing with some 2,4 million tonnes of chrysotile asbestos being sold.
He said the Quebec market has stabilized at about 200,000 tonnes a year.
At the same time, the price has improved which could assure a number of jobs at the Lac d’Amiante mine for a number of years.
Poulin said the way of the future is to change the perception of non friable chrysotile fiber products. Non-friable asbestos materials contain a binder or hardening agent such as cement, asphalt or vinyl, including asphalt roofing shingles and vinyl asbestos floor tiles.
Industry boss Simon Dupéré, a McGill business student who took over the company when his father Jean Dupéré died suddenly in 2002, insists chrysotile asbestos can be mined and used safely.
“We did our homework and we are continuing to work to improve productivity, methods of production, and our performance,” said Dupéré. “We have a good fiber that has a future, even if we are facing lots of propaganda from some sources.”
But Canadian and Quebec officials have failed to persuade Europe that asbestos can be safely used in most building products. Even at home, Poulin said that despite political support, they have been unable to create a market here in Canada.
“The past still haunts us,” says Poulin. “The old phantoms are still in our closets.”
Poulin said Canadian government, industry, and workers will have to work with counterparts in other countries that produce and use asbestos to counter the bans that have crippled the industry.
“We will have to work with the Russians, the Brazilians, the Chinese and the Africans to convince the international community that chrysotile can be used safely.”
Poulin said Quebec’s unionized asbestos workers have been in contact with their Russian comrades. After a visit to Moscow last April for the International Conference of Trade Unions on Chrysotile, they adopted a Chrysotile Charter and set a strategy for 2008-2009 to defend the rights of chrysotile industry workers.
The text of the charter was approved by trade unions who represents the interests of some three million asbestos miners from Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Russia Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
Poulin said the international organized labour group is using their demographic weight to convince political leaders as well as the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization that chrysotile fibers can be used safely.
“Our colleagues in other countries have reacted tardily,” he pointed out. “It’s a last ditch effort.”
By Rita Legault
April 14, 2008 |
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Montreal Canadiens
