Glencore Reached Ore at Onaping Depth. Its Sudbury Nickel Matte Is Refined in Norway.

Glencore has completed the internal shaft at its Onaping Depth project near Sudbury, Ontario, and reached the nickel-copper ore body roughly 2,600 metres underground.¹²³ That is a real execution milestone for a mine designed around battery-electric equipment, but it is not the same thing as saying full commercial production is underway.

Glencore's Aug. 27 release says the first mining areas, or stopes, have been prepared and ore can begin being extracted, calling the work a step toward production ramp-up and project completion in 2027.³ Northern Ontario Business separately reported Glencore Sudbury INO vice-president Zachary Mayer describing the event as the "start of first production" and saying the first stopes were ready for extraction.⁴ Natural Resources Canada, however, still describes shaft completion and ore access as a step toward first production later in 2026, while Ontario says full production is planned for 2027.¹²

The safest reading is that Onaping Depth has moved into ore access and an early production ramp, while the public sources are not yet using one consistent definition for the point at which the mine reaches full or commercial production.

The electric-mine plan is old. Reaching the ore is new.

Onaping Depth has been built around battery-electric underground equipment for years. Ontario now describes the project as having an all-electric fleet of 66 vehicles, but a Glencore-provided 2026 profile published by the Canadian Institute of Mining says Craig Mine is expected to have 66 battery-electric vehicles.¹⁵ The public record reviewed for this story therefore does not establish that all 66 machines are already commissioned and operating underground.

There is firmer evidence for parts of that fleet. Epiroc announced a 23-machine order in 2022 covering Scooptram loaders, Minetruck haulers, Boomer face-drilling rigs, Boltec and Cabletec rock-reinforcement rigs, and Simba production-drilling rigs.⁶ MacLean Engineering separately said its Onaping battery-electric equipment would handle explosives charging, secondary reduction, shotcrete spraying, concrete transport and utility-vehicle work.⁷

That matters more at 2.6 kilometres underground than it would at a shallow operation because diesel equipment adds heat and exhaust that must be removed. Glencore was already projecting in 2019 that an all-electric design could cut ventilation energy use by 44% and cooling energy by 30% compared with an equivalent diesel operation.⁸ Ontario's current release cites roughly 40% lower ventilation energy and 30% lower cooling energy.¹ Those figures are longstanding design expectations, not newly measured operating results from a fully ramped 2026 fleet.

The 280,000-tonne nickel figure is not annual output

Glencore's 2025 Resources and Reserves Report lists 16.8 million tonnes of Onaping Depth ore reserves at an average grade of 1.66% nickel and 0.86% copper, with a 19-year reserve-based expected mine life.⁹ Ontario says the project is expected to produce about 280,000 tonnes of nickel and 145,000 tonnes of copper over its life.¹

Those numbers line up with the metal contained in the reserve base: 16.8 million tonnes of ore at 1.66% nickel is about 279,000 tonnes of nickel before processing recovery, smelting, refining and payability effects.¹⁹ In other words, Ontario's roughly 280,000-tonne nickel figure is consistent with contained nickel across the reserve plan. It should not be read as 280,000 tonnes of annual production, recovered nickel, refined nickel or battery-grade material.

Ontario separately projects about one million tonnes of ore per year once the mine reaches full scale.¹

Sudbury mining and smelting do not mean final refining is in Canada

The current processing chain also has an international step that is easy to lose in broad claims about domestic critical-minerals supply.

Ontario says Onaping ore will be processed through Glencore's Strathcona Mill and Sudbury Smelter.¹ Glencore's current Sudbury INO operations page says Strathcona produces nickel-copper concentrate, the Sudbury Smelter converts that concentrate into nickel matte, and the matte is then shipped through Quebec City to Glencore's Nikkelverk refinery in Norway for further refining.¹⁰

That does not make Onaping irrelevant to Canadian supply. It expands a Canadian source of mined and smelted nickel and extends Sudbury production beyond the life of older deposits. But the verified current route is not an end-to-end Canadian refined-nickel chain.

It also does not establish where the refined nickel ultimately goes. The current public sources reviewed for this story do not identify an Onaping-specific automaker, cathode producer, battery customer, battery-grade allocation or offtake agreement.¹²³⁹¹⁰ That is a limit of the public record, not evidence that no battery customer exists.

Nickel is important to some EV battery chemistries, but it is not an EV-only commodity. Natural Resources Canada says batteries accounted for 15% of global nickel consumption in 2024, compared with 64% for stainless steel.¹¹

The next meaningful Onaping milestones are therefore less ceremonial: a clearer production-status definition, the ramp toward Ontario's 2027 full-production target, a verified commissioned count for the battery-electric fleet, measured operating results from that equipment, and eventual disclosure of recovered nickel output or customer allocation.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Ontario Marks First Access to Nickel Ore at the Craig Mine Onaping Depth Expansion — Government of Ontario, Aug. 27, 2026. https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1007946/ontario-marks-first-access-to-nickel-ore-at-the-craig-mine-onaping-depth-expansion Establishes ore access, project depth, 2027 full-production target, one-million-tonne annual ore projection, life-of-mine metal figures, the 66-EV project description, energy-reduction projections and Sudbury processing context. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

2. Canada attracts a $2 billion mining investment in Sudbury's Craig Mine — Natural Resources Canada, Aug. 27, 2026. https://www.canada.ca/en/natural-resources-canada/news/2026/08/canada-attracts-a-2-billion-mining-investment-in-sudburys-craig-mine.html Establishes shaft completion, first ore access and the federal wording that first production is expected later in 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Onaping Depth Project at Craig Mine celebrates major milestones to advance the future of mining in Ontario and Canada — Glencore Canada Corporation / CNW, Aug. 27, 2026. https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/onaping-depth-project-at-craig-mine-celebrates-major-milestones-to-advance-the-future-of-mining-in-ontario-and-canada-805784783.html Establishes Glencore's description of shaft completion, ore-body access, prepared stopes, production ramp-up and the battery-electric project framing. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Doug Ford marks production start of Glencore's $1.8B Onaping Depth nickel mine — Northern Ontario Business, Lindsay Kelly, Aug. 27, 2026. https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/industry-news/mining/doug-ford-marks-production-start-of-glencores-18b-onaping-depth-nickel-mine-12712589 Originating local report for Zachary Mayer's event remarks describing the start of first production and first extractable stopes. ↩

5. Partner Spotlight: Glencore — Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum, June-July 2026; story provided by Glencore. https://www.cim.org/industry-partners/spotlights-2026/partner-spotlight-glencore/ Establishes current prospective wording that Craig Mine is expected to have a 66-BEV fleet; used as a caveat against treating 66 as a verified commissioned count. ↩

6. Epiroc wins large battery-electric equipment order for new all-electric mine in Canada — Epiroc, July 4, 2022. https://www.epirocgroup.com/en/media/corporate-press-releases/2022/20220704-epiroc-wins-large-battery-electric-equipment-order-for-new-all-electric-mine-in-canada Establishes the 23-machine order and equipment categories; it does not establish current utilization of every ordered machine. ↩

7. MacLean Battery Electric Mining Vehicle Technology to Support Glencore All-Electric Mine — MacLean Engineering, June 13, 2022. https://macleanengineering.com/maclean-battery-electric-mining-vehicle-technology-to-support-glencore-all-electric-mine/ Establishes MacLean's announced battery-electric support-equipment categories; it does not provide an Onaping unit count. ↩

8. Onaping Depth: Collaborating with the EV Industry to Prepare for Mining at Depth — Glencore Canada, May 14, 2019. https://www.glencore.ca/en/media-and-insights/insights/onaping-depth-collaborating-with-the-electric-vehicle-industry Establishes that the battery-electric design and 44% ventilation / 30% cooling energy expectations predate the 2026 milestone; its old production-date expectation is not used as current timing evidence. ↩

9. Glencore Resources and Reserves Report 2025 — Glencore plc, published 2026; reserve basis Dec. 31, 2025. https://www.glencore.com/.rest/api/v1/documents/static/a17cc44b-7947-4169-9b6b-b882403fb42b/GLENCORE-Resources-and-Reserves-report-2025.pdf Establishes Onaping Depth's 16.8 Mt total ore reserves at 1.66% nickel and 0.86% copper and the 19-year reserve-based expected mine life. ↩ ↩² ↩³

10. Sudbury INO — What we do — Glencore Canada, current page checked Aug. 27, 2026. https://www.glencore.ca/en/sudburyino/what-we-do Establishes the current Strathcona Mill -> Sudbury Smelter -> nickel matte -> Quebec City -> Nikkelverk, Norway processing route. ↩ ↩²

11. Nickel facts — Natural Resources Canada, current page using 2024 production/use data, checked Aug. 27, 2026. https://natural-resources.canada.ca/minerals-mining/mining-data-statistics-analysis/minerals-metals-facts/nickel-facts Establishes the 2024 global nickel-use split used for EV-market context. ↩