After forming Curragh Resources , Clifford Frame obtained a 90-day option to acquire all of the Faro Mining Assets in Yukon, which were developed at a cost exceeding $1 billion in the 1960s by Cyprus Minerals.

He led Curragh in raising $60 million, the restructuring of a $140 million bank loan, and the restructuring of government funding. Clifford also enabled Curragh to comply with environmental obligations and initiated the hiring of 400 people to begin operations, along with an already assembled excellent management team and work force to begin production in the middle of winter.

The Faro concentrator was initially a 5,000 tonne-per-day operation in the early 1970's. It was expanded several times so it could process 14,000 tonnes daily, which at the time, was a pretty big plant by Canadian standards.

When Curragh Resources first considered taking over the Faro operation, concentrate transportation to the Alaskan seaport at Skagway was a key, make-or-break factor. The previous mine owners had relied on White Pass and Yukon Railways to truck the concentrates in containers from Faro to Whitehorse. Curragh opted to truck directly to Skagway using Super B -train trucks on a contract basis. The saving? A hefty $20 million per year when the ocean-going fleet is factored in.

Incoming materials, such as grinding media, were shipped in (ISO) containers on rail to Seattle and barge to Skagway and then north on Super B -trains to Faro.

In addition to shipping grinding media and reagents to Faro and Sa Dena Hes, the transportation system could move 100,000 litres of fuel a day to the mines. This gave Curragh the ability to purchase fuel for both mines directly from west coast refineries and ship it at low cost. (Curragh also assisted Yukon Energy Corp. and Yukon Electrical Co. to buy and deliver low-cost diesel fuel to their diesel-powered generating stations, potentially providing industrial and household users with lower electrical rates.)

Faro Mines shipped its first concentrate to the revitalized Port of Skagway, U.S.A. on June 8, 1986. The Faro-Skagway run sees 1,900 tonnes of concentrates shipped daily in "cupcake" containers, four to a truck, that each hold 12 tones of concentrate. It took 20 minutes to load a Super B-train at the mine-sites and 12 minutes to unload in Skagway. On the backhaul, up to 500 containers of lime, soda ash, grinding media and other reagents and chemicals made the trip annually through the mountain pass.

The Sa Dena Hes - Skagway haul resulted in a daily 500 tonnes of Sa Dena Hes concentrates arriving at the 150,000-tonne capacity portside warehouse.

Curragh inaugurated production that would raise Cyprus Anvils’ production level from 350,000 to 500,000 tonnes of concentrate per year using two-thirds of manpower numbers from the previous operator. Due to the extremely competent staff, the cost against expanded tonnage was over $40 million a year less.