http://www.eaglemine.com
The ore is processed by the mill down to a heavy sand and separated into nickel concentrate that is about 15% nickel. The copper concentrate is about 30% copper. It is then loaded into the gons to be shipped to be smelted and then refined into 99.9% pure product. Much goes to Sudbury, ON for that, and some goes to Quebec. Mineral Range serves the mine 3-4x per week. When I drove up to the mill, there were about a dozen empty gons staged on a siding just outside the mill. A Hercules trackmobile is used to shuffle the gons around. They load 2 at a time. About 70% of what they process is nickel, and about 25% is copper. The remaining 5% or so consists of trace amounts of gold, silver, palladium, and other trace metals that are extracted by the refineries.
The tour is 2 hours long. At the end, as I exited, a couple of Mineral Range units had appeared. They brought in the empties I saw earlier, and departed with 15 loads. I caught them at the M95 crossing about 1/2 mile west of the mill, then further north where the line crosses US41/M28.
Crossing M95:
Crossing US41/M28 and just after:
