Thompson Creek Mine

The Thompson Creek Mine is a primary, surface molybdenum mine and mill located approximately 48 kilometres southwest of the town of Challis in Idaho's Custer County.

The mine, which began operations in 1983, uses conventional open-pit mining methods with large electric-powered shovels that can each move up to 100,000 tons of waste rock and ore per day. The shovels load ore into 200-ton trucks to be hauled to an on-site mill (concentrator). A molybdenum disulfide concentrate is processed from the ore through a series of crushing, grinding, and flotation operations.

Daily throughput of ore at the mill averages close to 28,000 tons per day. Most of the molybdenum disulfide concentrate produced at the mine is further processed into technical grade molybdenum oxide at the Langeloth Metallurgical Facility in Pennsylvania. A small portion of the concentrate in the form of high performance molybdenum is packaged at the mine and sold directly to customers.

The mine and concentrator were placed on care and maintenance in December 2014 when the mining and processing of Phase 7 ore was completed. We expect to re-evaluate the status of Thompson Creek Mine as market conditions warrant.