The giant among the PotashCorp potash divisions, Lanigan has the capacity to produce 3.828 million product tonnes a year from its deposits 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) below the Saskatchewan prairie. The current mining areas stretch 5 kilometers north and 7.5 kilometers south from the main shaft.

The Lanigan mine is a conventional potash mine and uses long room and pillar mining techniques to extract the ore. The mine employs nine four-rotor and one two-rotor mining machines. Each machine cuts a profile of 2.74 meters by 8.23 meters (9 feet by 27 feet) and advances at a rate of up to 30 centimeters per minute. They typically mine at 650 tonnes per hour. Once mined, the ore passes directly from the miner onto a conveyor system which transports the ore to underground storage bins for hoisting to the surface. There are 441 active employees.

The ore, containing 33 percent KCl (potassium chloride, or potash), 56 percent NaCl (sodium chloride, or salt), 8 percent insoluble clay and 3 percent other salts, is crushed to free the KCl. After scrubbing and de-sliming to remove the clay, it is conditioned with reagents before the flotation process in which the KCl is floated off the top of the cells. The concentrate is then de-brined, dried and screened. Lanigan has the largest mill in the industry, capable of handling more than 1,300 tonnes of ore per hour.

Lanigan potash is graded for application as fertilizer and is stored in three large bins with a combined capacity of 250,000 tonnes.

Transportation:
Rail – Most product from Lanigan travels by rail on Canadian National and Canadian Pacific to centers throughout North America for domestic sales or to ports for delivery offshore.

Waterways – Product destined for offshore customers is exported through Canpotex, the export company owned by all Saskatchewan potash producers, from the West Coast, the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico.

Uses:
Lanigan produces standard, suspension and granular grade potash for agriculture.

Markets:
More than half of potash sales go offshore. In China, where farmers grow two or three crops a year, rice is the largest consumer. In Brazil, most is used on soybean, sugar cane and corn. In Malaysia, oil palm is the largest consumer of potash. In the US, corn is the major consumer of potash.