The story
Teck is named after the Township of Teck in Northern Ontario. The name Teck itself comes from Mary of Teck, the British queen from 1910 to 1936, who was a member of the House of Teck. The Teck Cominco Lead-Zinc Smelter operation in Trail, British Columbia has its roots in the late 19th century. The smelter has been in operation for over a century.
Cominco (1906–)
Cominco started in 1906 as The Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada, formed by the amalgamation of several units controlled by the Canadian Pacific Railway. CM&S, or "Smelters" as it was often called by investors, changed its name to Cominco in 1966. Cominco's core Sullivan Mine in Kimberley, British Columbia which began production of lead, zinc, silver and tin in 1909, would operate for more than 90 years until its ore reserves exhausted in 2001.
Teck-Hughes (1913–)
Teck-Hughes Gold Mines Limited was incorporated on 8 April 1913 to take over the Hughes-Reamsbottom claims at Kirkland Lake. The company was founded by a group of Toronto businessmen, all of whom were directors of the Great Northern Silver Company Limited. The original directors of the company were president A. D. Crooks, first vice-president Frank Plummer, second vice-president James A. Hughes, John H. Hyland, W. J. Green, S. H. Bradford, and William Ross Smyth. F. L. Cody was the first company secretary. Teck was capitalised at $2 million, and Great Northern Silver held a 25 per cent stake in the new company. Teck's first president was Alexander David Crooks (1864–1941), a prominent Toronto lawyer and partner in the firm Cameron & Crooks, which he had founded with Alexander Cameron. Crooks was the grandson of politician James Crooks, and the son-in-law of William Hodgson Ellis, dean of engineering at the University of Toronto.
In November 1913, an English syndicate led by C. A. Foster of Haileybury, Ontario and represented by Harry Cecil purchased $150,000 of Teck shares from Great Northern Silver Mines. The following month, the syndicate for Kirkland Lake Proprietary Limited as a holding company for its expanding portfolio of mines.
An American group of investors led by Charles Land Denison, including International Nickel Company (INCo)'s Albert W. Johnston, acquired two thirds of Teck-Hughes' shares. It was Ontario's first gold mine in commercial production. At the Teck-Hughes annual meeting on 17 October 1915, the Buffalo group took control of the company formally. Charles Land Denison (1886–1930) replaced Crooks as president. R. W. Pomeroy of Buffalo was elected vice-president, Crooks became secretary, and H. Clark became treasurer. The other directors were A. W. Johnston and J. F. Thompson.
On 8 October 1930, president Denison died at his home in Saddle River, New Jersey. Later that month, Albert Wheeler Johnston (1871–1952) was appointed president to succeed the late Denison. Johnston remained president until June 1932, when he was succeeded by Dr David Law Hobbes Forbes (1881–1962). Upon his accession to the presidency, Forbes moved the company's head offices from New York to Toronto. Concurrently, Johnston was made the company's first chairman of the board. In June 1947, Johnston retired as chairman of the board.
At the company's annual meeting on 3 May 1954, Forbes retired as president. His successor was Herbert Chipman "Chip" McCloskey (1886–1954). However, just over two weeks later, on 19 May McCloskey died in his office from a heart attack. The following month, John Charles Perry (1900–1965) was appointed to the presidency.
When the ore was exhausted in the 1960s, after 50 years of production, it had produced 3.7 million ounces of gold worth C$104 million. The Beaverdell Mine, purchased by Teck in 1969, went back even further to 1898, and produced silver until 1991. Norman B. Keevil (b.1910 in Pike Lake, Saskatchewan) a mining entrepreneur with a background in geophysics, acquired Teck-Hughes in the 1960s. In 1963, his son, geoscientist Norman Keevil Jr., then 25-years old, became vice-president of exploration at Teck. Keevil Jr. was named Mining Man of the Year in 1979 for having presided over a series of mine constructions in the 1970s. From 1979 to 2015, Keevil oversaw Teck's major mining projects including Hemlo, Voisey's Bay and Antamina. Over the same time period, Teck became "one of the world's largest producers of metallurgical coal." In 2012, as Chairman of Teck Resources Limited, Keevil Jr. was named as the Entrepreneur Of The Year for his significant contributions to British Columbia.
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Teck Cominco
The association between Teck and Cominco began in 1986, when Teck and two industry partners acquired a shareholding from CP Limited, and culminated with the merging of the two companies in July 2001.
On May 8, 2006, Teck Cominco offered to purchase Inco for $US16 billion, but CVRD eventually purchased it for $US17 billion. On July 29, 2008, Teck Cominco announced an agreement with Fording Canadian Coal Trust, which owned a 60% stake in the Elk Valley Coal Partnership, to purchase 100% of its assets. Teck Cominco had been the minority owner of the Elk Valley Coal Partnership, with a 40% stake. The facilities are located near Fernie, British Columbia. The purchase was closed on October 30, 2008, with a final cost of $US14 billion. Elk Valley Coal Corporation was renamed Teck Coal Limited. The purchase resulted in Teck taking on US$9.8 billion in debt; the company suspended dividends, cut spending, and sold some assets to save money. On January 9, 2009, the company also announced a plan to cut 13% of their total workforce, amounting to 1,400 jobs, saving the company US$85 million. Coal production targets were also lowered by 20% in response to declining worldwide demand for steel, in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis.
Teck Resources (2008–)
Beginning October 1, 2008, Teck Cominco began rebranding itself as Teck. The legal name of the company was changed to Teck Resources Ltd. on April 23, 2009, after being approved by shareholders the previous day. In 2008, Teck's $25 million donation to BC Children's Hospital Foundation earned its name attached to the Teck Acute Care Centre expected to complete construction in 2017.
In July 2009, China Investment Corporation bought a 17% stake in Teck for C$1.74 billion. In 2012, the Company announced record earning, record profit and record production, thus ending the year 2011 with C$4.4 billion in cash. Besides expanding into the energy sector, the company was also executing two major projects in Chile and planning a C$600 million restart of its Quintette Mine near Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia.
In 2021, Teck Resources was ranked no. 60 in the Arctic Environmental Responsibility Index (AERI) that includes 120 oil, gas, and mining companies involved in resource extraction north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Finland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden.
The company's board rejected a US$23.1 billion hostile takeover offer by Swiss competitor Glencore in April 2023. In November 2023, Teck Resources decided to divest its steelmaking coal businesses in a series of transactions that value the operations at US$9 billion with Glencore taking majority ownership (77%). The remaining interests are acquired by Japan's Nippon Steel (20%) and South Korea's POSCO (3%). The deal received government approval in July 2024, allowing Teck Resources to become purely a metals producer with the focus in copper and zinc.
On 9 September 2025, London-headquartered Anglo American and Teck Resources announced they had reached an agreement to combine the two companies in a merger of equals to form the Anglo Teck group, a global critical minerals champion and top five global copper producer, headquartered in Canada and expected to offer investors more than 70% exposure to copper. In December 2025, shareholders approved the merger, followed by an approval by Canada’s industry minister, Mélanie Joly.
From Wikipedia’s article on Teck Resources, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7