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Show MINE AND MILL TO BOOST LAGGING MILFORD ECONOMY SHIELD DEVELOPMENT STARTS PREPARING FOR PRODUCTION By BART STEELY The miners have finally done it again. In 1880 they played a major ro!e in planting Milford cn the map. Now they are back to put Milford on the map again, or at least give the ailing city a respite from the threat of economic stagnation that'rms hovered overhead over-head for the last decade, ever since the railroad pulled the props from under its operations and reduced the community to a virtual whistle stop. The return of the miners puts at rest rumors, wi!d and mild guesses and wishful thinking that have k2pt Milford confused on its future, minewise. Three weeks ago J. P. (Pat) of a long-range project, to be carried out in thrre paso?. ; "We would not be speding I ??. million at the outset to put the mill and m'ne in ehap-? if we were mere'y gcing to prcbs and hope," he said. "Our monthly payroll will amount to 530,000 to 35,000." How will all this effect Milford? Mil-ford? "The doctor, the butcher, the baker and even the candlestick Continued en Page Two Sheridan, head of the Shield nevelop:rwnt Co. in Canada, announced that the old OK Mine,, five miles northwest of Milford, and the mill formerly owned and operated by the American Mining Co., would be reopened in quest of copper. cop-per. The decision was not spontaneous but was the result of 20 years of exploration, research, re-search, analyzing and evaluation evalua-tion of the ore potential within with-in a 33 square mile area just west of here. "This is the first time we ever had a crack at a real big one," Mr. Sheridan told the Northern Miner of Toronto, Tor-onto, organ of the mining industry in-dustry in the north. "There is no doubt there is a lot of copper here," meaning in the Milford area. Sent here to take complete charge is one of Canada's ablest engineers, Ralf Kleine, now working day and night to get the mill ready as rapidly as possible. He has hired a dozen men so far to help him. More will be hired as the need aries, he said yesterday. "Naturally, we are going to employ as many as possible from Milford," Mr. Kleine said. "But certain key personnel must be brought in from the outside personnel that has the experience, the know-how of our type of operations. There will be no work at the mine until the mill is ready. That probably will be about three months. By then there will be about 60 men on our payroll to operate the mill. "We have found that one-third one-third of the mill is usable, one-third one-third in need of repair and the other third will be discarded to make way for newer equipment. equip-ment. This equipment, manufactured manu-factured in the United States, will be shipped from Canada where it has been used in uranium mining." Mr. Kleine emphasized that the opening of the OK mine and mill is only the beginning area to be worked over which will be opened up afier th. OK pit is drained, or worked out. "In each case we will go down 150 or possibly 200 f.:et to clear out the copper, then move on to the next mine," Mr. Kleine said. "It will not be an overnight bonanza, but will take time, perhaps years. The whole operation is an extensive ex-tensive one, involving millions of dollars." At present the Sharidart group has five mines in Canada Can-ada operating at full capacity and another has been acquired that is being developed like the one in the Miliord area. According to the repor's on the exploration of the deposits de-posits within the 33-square-mile area here, the mining group is counting on a tonnage ton-nage of more than 80 million mil-lion in ore from all the mines it will work in the Milford group. If everything goes as anticipated two more mills will be built, one with a 1500-ton capacity, the otier with a capacity of 5,000 tons and possibly 10,000 tons in the three-stage program. The present mill has a capacity ca-pacity of 750 tons. Although the exploration of the mining area covered a period per-iod of 20 years, the acquisition acquisi-tion of the land, including claims, was accomplished in the last two years. "The acquisition of the lai:d was the only thing that kept us from moving in sooner," Mr. Kleine said. "And we had to make sure of our ground before we could let the cat out of the bag." The three-phase venture was engineered by Mr. Sheridan. Here is how it will work: Phase I is a straight commitment com-mitment by the Shield company com-pany to bring into production what is known as the OK mine ore body This will be financed fi-nanced by the Shield company and the Sheridan group at an estimated cost of $2 million. This phase involves the revamping re-vamping and remodeling of the present plant just over a mile west of Milford. Phase I profits will be split, 65 going to Shield and 35 to the Toledo Mining Corp. which is the principal vendor of the property involved. The Toledo interests are guaranteed guaran-teed a minimum annual profit prof-it of $100,000 in the OK phase. HERE'S MORE ABOUT O MINE - MILL Continued from Tage One maker, if you have one, soon;r or later will benefit from our operation," Mr. Kleine said. "Our men and their families must be housed and fed. There will be a continuous stream of supplies pouring into and through Milford to meet our needs. "Approximately 100 men will find work with companies under contract to us. Cement has to be laid. Equipment must be trucked in. Buildings have to be erected. Our mining crews will not do this work. Subcontractors will be called upon to do it. "Of course, if wo cannot obtain ob-tain in Milford the type of men we want, or certain materials, mater-ials, we will have to turn to other communiteis in Beaver County. So you might say that all of Beaver County will benefit from our expenditures." For many years, ever since the Horn Silver mine at Frisco ceased its diggings in the early 1950's, Milford has hoped and even prayed for further mining min-ing to sustain its economy. Hopes have been raised time and again and then dashed to bits when mining men came to the area periodically and probed the possibility of copper cop-per procurement, then left without encouraging words. On several occasions the mill was reopened to process copper from some of the diggings, dig-gings, only to close down when the mining became unprofitable. unprofit-able. Importation of copper from other countries was a big factor in decisions then not to resume mining in the area. It was cheaper to buy the imported im-ported product than to mine it. Meanwhile, Sheridan's enterprises, enter-prises, known as Sheridan Geophysics, Geo-physics, Ltd., and including the Shield company, quietly dug into the hills and came to the conclusion that there was enough copper to warrant operations op-erations in the Milford area. The only thing that was not decided was the richness of the ore beneath the surface. Mr. Kleine said that all the mining will be confined to copper cop-per to start with, in open-pit type work. There are half a dozen other mines within the The OK ore body has a mineralized min-eralized monzonite plug holding hold-ing 5,000 to 6,000 tons in each vertical foot. The ore in the OK pit runs to a depth of 450 feet, but below 200 feet the pit would be mined as a glory hole. The grade of the ore is placed at 1.2 copper. The ore is oxidized and will require re-quire leaching. As a result it will cost more to mill. The recovery is estimated at 85. When Phase II commences, another mining company, the Noranda Mines, through its U. S. subsidiary, Norandex Inc., will step into the picture, joining Shield in further exploration. ex-ploration. Noranda will provide pro-vide the first $1 million operating oper-ating fund, for which it will draw 51 interest and Shield the remaining 49. Phase III will be carried out by these same companies. In Phase II the Noranda-Shield Noranda-Shield group has 18 months to decide whether to proceed with other mines in the Milford group, with a minimum production pro-duction of 1500 tons daily The Toledo group would be given 30 of the profits from this phase. It would be guaranteed an annual take cf $150,000 |
