The Canadian Malartic mine, one of the largest open-pit gold mines in Canada, is located in the urban setting of Malartic, at the heart of the Abitibi gold belt. Approximately 3 kilometers east of the town’s entrance, the Odyssey mine is currently under construction. This new project will extend the continuity of the Canadian Malartic and Barnat pit deposits by tapping into already identified underground mineralized zones, and is poised to become one of the country’s most significant underground gold mines.
As of March 31, 2023, Agnico Eagle Mines Limited is the sole owner of the Canadian Malartic mine and the Odyssey mine, both of which it manages and operates. With the ongoing operation of the Barnat pit, the Canadian Malartic mine is expected to remain active until 2029. Meanwhile, the Odyssey mine has an estimated operational lifespan extending to 2042.
It works nonstop for seven days a week, 24 hours each day, through its mobile units in number of more than 100 and a total of more than 1,600 workers, which includes around 700 permanent workers and close to 900 contractual workers. As far as production is concerned, it handles a processing of over 55,000 tonnes of ore per day within the plant, resulting in gold production of 665,654 ounces of gold, which also includes gold mining from Odyssey Mine. An 8-millionth gold pouring achievement was witnessed in February 2025.
The East Malartic Mine is one of the four significant gold mines in Malartic, operating from 1936 to 1983. The processing plant that operated here afterward treated ore from other mines until 2002. In 2009, based on an agreement reached with the Government of Quebec, we decided to take responsibility for half of the financial cost associated with the rehabilitation of the site, using tailings from our new mine, Canadian Malartic, to rehabilitate the site.
This choice of method has allowed us to limit the footprint of the project, consume less water, and manage the risks more effectively, thereby optimizing the environmental impact of the project. With this method, we were able to rehabilitate this abandoned site that currently is under our tailings storage facility and waste rock dump of the Canadian Malartic Mine.
The mining operation in the Canadian Malartic pit ended in the spring of 2023, as the capacity of the tailings storage facility was reached in 2024. Therefore, it was decided to use the Canadian Malartic pit for deposition of both waste rock and tailings.
Waste rock can be defined as an ore body that does not have any amount of gold in it and is stored in our waste rock stockpiles. The term ‘ore’ relates to rocks that have gold in it and are used at our processing plant to recover the valuable mineral.
