Torex's decarbonization drive improving safety at Mexican mine, says exec

The investment made by Canadian mining company Torex Gold to reduce its carbon footprint at its Morelos complex in Mexico’s Guerrero state has involved the acquisition of new technologies that also improve safety conditions for employees, the senior VP for the country, Faysal Rodríguez, told an event.

Torex is building an 8.5MW solar plant requiring an investment of US$5mn and hopes to have a fleet of around 70 electric trucks and other electrified equipment at the Media Luna underground deposit that would make it “the largest in Latin America,” according to Rodríguez.

Mining investments in Latin America are increasingly focused on the implementation of decarbonization plans, as revealed by the BNamericas 2023 Mining Survey, as companies strive to supply critical minerals required by the energy transition.

“We are dedicated to responsible mining. However, these initiatives that are associated with the business have led us to learn about clean energy,” said the VP during CanCham Day 2023 in Mexico City.

The electric trucks, loaders and drilling and other equipment that the company is acquiring “help to considerably reduce our emissions, but above all improve safety for our personnel,” said Rodríguez.

He added that with the electrical equipment, the noise level is lower than that currently found in underground mines, which allows the implementation of new additional technologies such as anti-collision and personnel detection systems.

“A technology that we implement in our open pit operations is called SmartCap. It is a band that detects neural activity and fatigue conditions in our operators, so that at the control post we can identify these operators, and our supervisor talks to the operator who then rests, and at the end of the day it is a technology that saves lives,” Rodríguez said.

“We have had incidents that have not had serious consequences for our workers, but they did give us an indicator that these technologies were necessary to manage fatigue in our operations,” he added.

The Torex manager confirmed that the Media Luna project is currently 35% complete. “We are on track to launch operations in the last four months of 2024, with the objective of reaching throughput of 7,500t/d,” he said.

Torex's only operating asset is the Morelos complex, which began commercial operations in 2016 and includes El Limón-Guajes (pictured) and the US$875mn Media Luna project.

The complex produced 474,035oz of gold in 2022 and Media Luna is due to add 170,000oz/y.