Corporate 100--Fairbanks Gold Mining Inc.

• Author: Schmitz, Richard F.
• Position: Alaska Business Monthly's 2003

Pioneer gold miner and explorer Felix Pedro would certainly be proud of a pair of gold mines that have risen up from some of the same rich ground he worked about a century ago.

He'd be impressed with the technology and innovation used to dig, mill and refine the gold, and with the way gold continues to enrich a local economy in the heart of the Great Land. Pedro founded Fairbanks as a gold rush city on the banks of the Chena River. Today, Fairbanks Gold Mining Inc. is putting plenty of wealth into the modern bank buildings of downtown Fairbanks, which lines the Chena River.

Two gold mines, Fort Knox and True North, make up Fairbanks Gold Mining Inc., which is owned by Toronto, Ontario-based Kinross Gold Corp., the world's seventh largest gold mining company.

FGMI boasts impressive numbers--and impressive trucks. In 2003, the company will process 51 million tons of ore, from which 408,000 ounces of gold will be recovered. Direct payroll is anticipated at $20.9 million, shared among 425 employees, with the total impact on the local economy figured to be $196 million.

At the same time, seven new ore trucks and four new haul trucks have been added to or replaced vehicles in the fleet in 2003 along with one new Hitachi EX 3600 shovel, which carries a sticker price of $3.7 million.

Klondike gold stampeders used basic technology--rockers, sluice boxes, pickaxes, gold pans, steam points--to recover gold that had been washed downstream in rivers dinosaurs drank from eons ago.

In recent times, gold miners have reworked tailings from that era, but FGMI's open-pit hard-rock mines are entirely different. In fact, gold miners of Pedro's day would not have recognized the lodes as having any value whatsoever, explained Lorna Shaw, community affairs director for FGMI. "The gold we're after is not visible, and without new technology and such a large-scale operation, it would be impossible to recover. Even 30 years ago, this couldn't be done."

"We're mining on a scale Felix Pedro never could have imagined," said FGMI general manager Rick Dye. Neither could Pedro have dreamed of gold being used in cell phones, microchips or for new medical technologies.

The mines consist of open pits where a gold-bearing rock is dug out with giant shovels and then sent through a milling process. Each ton of ore at Fort Knox yields just 0.245 ounces of gold. In gold rush days, placer gold was found in flakes or nuggets. The gold in the modem mine is microscopic.

Once the giant...