Vale's Sudbury Clarabelle Mill processes Cu/Ni ores from a number of mines in the Sudbury basin in Ontario, Canada._x000D_
Bulk sulphide flotation produces a copper-nickel concentrate with pyrrhotite as the major diluent._x000D_
After successful commissioning of the Voisey's Bay Cu/Ni Mill (VBN) in Labrador, a miniplant campaign on Clarabelle ore with the VBN flow sheet produced a significant recovery improvement over current performance. In 2001, the Mill Redesign Project moved grinding energy into rock/sulphide and pentlandite/pyrrhotite separation and in 2006 Cu/Ni separation was re-introduced to Clarabelle Mill to produce a saleable Cu concentrate. The projects were a great success. What remained was to simplify the Clarabelle flow sheet by introducing the missing components found in the VBN flow sheet. This project known as CORe has evolved through many stages including the mining boom and surviving the 2008 economic downturn and it is scheduled for completion in mid 2013. This paper outlines some of the challenges faced in this major brownfields project - organizational, technical, financial and operational._x000D_
FORMAL CITATION:Lawson, V and Xu, M, 2011. Float it, clean it, depress it - consolidating the separation steps at Clarabelle Mill, in Proceedings MetPlant 2011, pp 589-601 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).