SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Companies in Yellowknife are actively working to determine the impact of the closure of De Beers Canada's Snap Lake mine.

A Nuna Logistics snow plough clears snow from the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road earlier this winter. Ron Near, director of winter road operations for the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road Joint Venture said it's too early to know how the closure of Snap Lake will affect this year's traffic numbers. - photo courtesy of the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Joint Venture

De Beers Canada announced on Friday that Snap Lake mine was going into care and maintenance, effectively closing operations. and laying off 434 employees.

During a press conference, De Beers Canada CEO Kim Truter called Snap Lake a "troubled operation from the onset," and said the move was part of a broader response by the company "to the very rapid downturn in the diamond market over the recent months."

"We've seen a very sudden and rapid decrease in demand for our products," he told reporters at the Yellowknife Inn.

Ron Near, director of winter road operations for the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road Joint Venture said De Beers won't be able to confirm the impact on trucking traffic until later this week.

"I'll be updated probably Thursday for more information on that," he said.

Pietro Bertolini, operations manager for wholesaler Northern Foodservices, said the company only started its contract with the mine four months ago, with most of Snap Lake's food supplies coming from southern competitors.

"It was revised this week," he said on Monday. "The original order came in (last) Tuesday and it was revised this morning."

Bertolini said Snap Lake's order from the Old Airport Road business was fairly small, about two pallets of dairy and cheese items sent out on a weekly basis.

"It was an opportunity to get in and hopefully increase the amount of Northern content," he said.

Bertolini estimated the reduced order cut that amount by 75 per cent.

"Maybe one?" he said. "Maybe three-quarters of a pallet."

By comparison, Bertolini said the dairy and cheese order for Diavik is approximately four pallets a week.

Department of Transportation spokesperson Nick Hurst said when it comes to flights between Snap Lake and the Yellowknife airport, the amount of traffic is actually fairly small.

"Those flights are handled by Det'on Cho Logistics," he said, estimating Det'on Cho makes up approximately two per cent of the airport's total flight traffic per year. "And the flights to Snap Lake are about one-quarter of that, so there won't be a huge fluctuation in flight traffic."

Hurst said the real impact on his department would be tolling on the winter road and bridge scale tolling. Yellowknifer couldn't determine by press time how much the GNWT makes from such tolling. However, he said that they were waiting for more information from Near and De Beers Canada.

Yellowknifer reached out to two aboriginal-owned trucking companies. Tli Cho Landtran Transport Ltd. declined to comment. Tli Cho Investment Corporation, which owns the Fort Saskatchewan, Alta.-based Ventures West, could not be reached by press time.

On Monday, Mountain Province Diamonds issued a news release about how dozens of employees from Snap Lake are already moving to the Gahcho Kue diamond mine currently being built in a joint-venture with De Beers Canada.

"Mountain Province was advised early last week of the planned cessation of operations at the De Beers Snap Lake mine and the opportunities this would afford selected Snap Lake employees to be hired at Gahcho Kue," the statement read. "Forty-one Snap Lake employees have been transferred to Gahcho Kue and a further 60 will be transferred next year as the mine prepares for production."

The 41 employees transferred to Gahcho Kue does not affect those already laid off; it's unclear if the 60 will come from that pool.

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