The Glencore-Merafe chrome venture operates ... a Section 189 consultation process at its Rustenburg smelter complex, which includes the Boshoek and Wonderkop operations, last year.

Glencore runs two mines in the Sudbury area, along with a mill and smelter, employing 1,200 people directly, plus another 1,200 contractors.

Shredded cellphones, obsolete computer cables and chewed-up cars are heaped 30 feet high outside Glencore’s 97-year-old copper smelter deep in Canada’s sparsely populated boreal forest.