NEW YORK — Taseko Mines Ltd. has reached a labor agreement with the Canadian Auto Workers union at its majority-owned Gibraltar copper-molybdenum mine in British Columbia.

"The timing of the new labor agreement is opportune, with the new Gibraltar development project 3 (GDP3) just weeks away from being handed over from the construction contractors to Gibraltar operations for ramp-up," Russell Hallbauer, president and chief executive officer of the Vancouver, British Columbia-based company, said in a statement.

GDP3 includes the addition of a 30,000-ton concentrator and other new equipment, boosting the mine’s processing capacity to 85,000 tons per day from 55,000 tons previously. As a result, copper production will average 165 million pounds annually over the mine’s 25-year life, according to the company.

The Gibraltar Mine, which produced 82.9 million pounds of copper and 1.3 million pounds of molybdenum in fiscal 2011, is owned 75-percent by Taseko and 25-percent by Cariboo Copper Corp., a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sojitz Corp.

The new labor agreement runs through May 31, 2016.