Welcome back to your weekly mining news recap, where we catch you up on some of the news you may have missed. This week’s headlines include Artemis Gold achieving commercial production at its Blackwater gold mine, ICMM unveiling a community-led closure guide, and Iamgold posting strong first quarter production results. 

At the 2025 CIM CONNECT Convention and Expo in Montreal this week, keynote speeches and panels focused on minerals, innovation and the energy transition. During Monday’s opening plenary, keynote speaker Rohitesh Dhawan, ICMM president and CEO, emphasized that sustainable industry transformation hinges on merging technological innovation with responsible, ethical practices. The subsequent panel discussion highlighted that mining’s main challenge is technology adoption, not innovation, and called for artificial intelligence as a support tool to help humans make decisions, not replace them.  

Tuesday’s keynote speaker, Christine Healy, president and CEO of Northland Power Inc., stressed Canada’s leadership potential on the global energy landscape, but warned that permitting delays and regulatory inefficiencies threaten progress and investment in critical minerals and clean energy infrastructure. On Wednesday, Northland Power announced the completion of the Oneida energy storage project in Ontario, a 250-megawatt/1,000-megawatt-hour battery energy storage facility, the largest of its kind operational in Canada. 

Ammar Al-Joundi, president and CEO of Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., the keynote speaker on Wednesday morning, highlighted the need for disciplined yet flexible financial strategies in mining, and advocated for smarter investment metrics. The subsequent panellists urged the industry to adopt non-traditional forms of financing, attract younger and tech-focused investors and better communicate mining’s social contributions. Panellists agreed that innovation and image transformation are key to unlocking new capital and sustaining long-term success in a volatile industry. At the final Wednesday lunch keynote and panel session, Rio Tinto’s general manager, technical Lucy Potter emphasized that improving communication and transparency across mining—from investor relations to community engagement—is essential to reducing risk, preserving value and accelerating project development in a complex industry. 

CIM launched the Innovation & Technology Society (ITS) at CIM CONNECT to unite innovators and mining companies and accelerate the development and adoption of solutions to key industry challenges. ITS is a call to action born from CIM’s recent strategic planning efforts, driven by industry conversations highlighting the slow pace of innovation. ITS will work with CIM societies and industry partners to drive meaningful change, and the society plans to host its first symposium in 2026. 

Rio Tinto, in partnership with Indium Corporation, extracted primary gallium from bauxite processed at its Vaudreuil alumina refinery in Saguenay, Quebec. This marks a key milestone in the company’s initiative to produce commercial quantities of the critical mineral. The next step is assessing extraction techniques that will enable the company to produce larger quantities of gallium at pilot-scale. If this is successful, Rio Tinto plans to build a demonstration plant in Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, with a capacity to produce up to 3.5 tonnes of gallium annually. This could lead to a future commercial facility with a production capacity of 40 tonnes per year—which would account for five to 10 per cent of global gallium production. 

Artemis Gold shared that it has achieved commercial production at its Blackwater gold mine in central B.C. as of May 1. In the preceding 30 days, the mill processed an average of 15,300 tonnes per day, which represents 93 per cent of design capacity. The company shared that it expects to produce between 160,000 to 200,000 ounces of gold at all-in sustaining costs of US$670 to US$770 per ounce. For the 2025 financial year, total gold production is forecasted to range from 190,000 to 230,000 ounces of gold. The company is planning for a second phase expansion to boost annual output to above 500,000 equivalent gold ounces. 

ICMM has released its new Handbook on Multistakeholder Approaches to Socio-Economic Transitions in Mining, which offers practical guidance on how to develop mine closure plans that help communities adapt and prosper in a post-mining landscape. It promotes shifting from company-led to partnership-based models that empower communities, Indigenous Peoples and local governments. Emphasizing early, collaborative action, the handbook aims to unlock lasting economic, social and environmental benefits for communities following mine closure. 

Iamgold shared its first quarter results for 2025, reporting that it had produced 161,000 attributable ounces of gold and reaffirming its full-year production guidance of 735,000 to 820,000 ounces. The company also shared that its Côté Gold project in northern Ontario achieved record throughput in March, totalling almost one million tonnes, with an average monthly throughput rate of 90 per cent. 

Canada Carbon has appealed the Commission de Protection du Territoire Agricole du Québec (CPTAQ’s) March 2025 decision to block the development of its Miller graphite project in Quebec on the basis that it would have a negative impact on local land and agricultural activities, as reported by Canadian Mining Journal. The company argued that the ruling undermines Quebec’s goals for critical minerals development and contradicts previous CPTAQ support for the project.  

The newly renamed Barrick Mining Corporation also shared strong first quarter results, producing 758,000 ounces of gold—at the high end of its guidance range of 700,000 to 750,000 ounces. The company also produced 44,000 tonnes of copper over the same period. 

That’s all for this week. If you’ve got feedback, you can always reach us at editor@cim.org. If you’ve got something to add, why not join the conversation on our Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram pages?