Cameco to restart Sask. facilities, hiring hundreds more workers

FILE -- The underground mine during a Cameco media tour of the uranium mine in Cigar Lake, Wednesday, September 23, 2015. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Liam Richards)

Cameco plans to resume production at its McArthur River mine and Key Lake processing plant this year, the company announced Wednesday.

“The improvement we’ve seen in the global uranium market in recent months has firmed up and we believe is sustainable,” spokesperson Jeff Hryhoriw said in an email to CTV News.

“We have had success building homes under long-term contracts to support a net increase in production, and we expect to continue layering in more new contracts going forward. We also anticipate significant improvement in our earnings and cash flow once the McArthur River mine and Key Lake mill are back in production. Running at any rate above zero is undeniably better, as it’s very expensive to maintain operations with no production (and therefore no revenue) being generated.”

Cameco had laid off 550 employees when it extended the shutdown of the facilities in 2018 due to the prolonged weakness in the global uranium market; 200 were to remain for care and maintenance.

The company will now increase the number of employees and contractors to 900 in 2025 from 470 in 2021.

“While we can’t predict the pace of the hiring ramp-up or the precise makeup of this expanded workforce at present, historically about half the workers at Cameco’s northern mines and mills have been Residents of Saskatchewan’s North, the vast majority being of Indigenous heritage. Cameco is presently one of Canada’s largest employers of Indigenous people – that will only increase with this announcement,” Hryhoriw said.

“It also means increased opportunity for the many northern businesses with which Cameco contracts. Typically, over 80 per cent of the services we use at our northern operations are purchased from northern/Indigenous-owned companies. Since 2004, Cameco has spent about $4 billion on services supplied by northern businesses. The spin-off economic activity and employment these restarts will generate are another positive for the region.”

Hryhoriw said Cameco will only produce product for long-term contracts with utility customers. Starting in 2024, McArthur River/Key Lake will operate at 40 per cent below the annual licensed capacity and Cigar Lake will run 25 per cent below its annual licensed capacity, for a combined reduction of 33 per cent of licensed capacity at the two operations.

“Maintaining this sort of supply discipline ensures that Cameco maximizes the value of its assets for the benefit of our shareholders, employees, northern partner communities and many other stakeholders.”