Four years ago, Agnico-Eagle decided to dig deeper at its LaRonde mine. In production since 1988 and currently the largest operating gold mine in Canada in terms of reserves, the site is located in the Abitibi-Temiscamingue region of northwest-em Quebec, approximately 650 kilometres northwest of Montreal. Of the mine's three shafts, the 2,250-metre deep shaft #3, the Penna shaft, is believed to be the deepest single-lift shaft in the Western Hemisphere. It is used to hoist LaRonde's ore production of approximately 7,200 tonnes per day. The mining method is predominantly transverse longhole stop-ing with delayed cemented backfill. In May 2006, Agnico-Eagle decided to sink a winze shaft close to its Penna shaft in order to reach ore reserves of gold-copper and zinc-silver mineralization that until then had been inaccessible below level 245 (2,450 meters below surface) to a depth of approximately 3,110 metres. They engaged mine shaft specialists Dumas Contracting to sink the new winze.
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