Highland Valley Copper intends to hire more workers in the coming months as it ramps up mine expansion, a union leader said.

While the mine declined to comment on speculation it will continue to ramp up hiring, Steelworkers leader Richard Boyce said he recently welcomed nearly 40 new workers at the mine and expects there will be many more to come.

“At a meeting they told us they’d be hiring 150 to 180 people in the next 18 months,” said Boyce, president of United Steelworkers Local 7619.

“It’s been fast and furious,” Boyce said of hiring.

The hiring is driven partly by an aging workforce. There are nearly 200 workers who could retire tomorrow without any penalty.

“I’d venture to say in the next five years we’ll see 250 people retire.”

But the mine also needs to move millions of tonnes more waste rock as it seeks to extend mine life to 2019 and beyond.

Copper prices that are more than triple the rate of a decade ago are causing expansion of production into areas of less copper concentration. Prices recently reached a 14-month peak.

Boyce said he expects major hiring to occur for drivers of the giant haul trucks once orders for new trucks are filled.

He said the unionized workforce peaked in 1988 at 1,172 people. Today the number is approaching 1,000.

“I don’t think we’ll end up with that many,” Boyce said of the earlier record. “Once hiring is complete we’ll end up close to 1,100. You add that to the staff (non-union) and the payroll is phenomenal.”

The majority of Highland Valley Copper employees live in Kamloops. The rest are distributed among Logan Lake, Merritt and Ashcroft.