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The Kemi mine is the only chrome mine in Europe, located in Finland close to the Swedish border.
The Kemi ore deposit was found in 1959, a decision to exploit the deposit was made in 1964 and FeCr production started in 1968 with a capacity of 28.000 tpy.
It was an open pit deposit (near surface down to 200m) when the decision to "go underground" was made in 1999.
Underground ore production started in 2003 from 500m depth proceeding upwards.
A yearly production of 1.2 million tonnes of ore is achieved (with mining an additional 3.5 million tonnes of barren rock).
There are 130 people working in that mine plus 80 staff from subcontractors.
Chromite Ore reserves in January 2006 were 41.1 million tonnes grading 24.5% Cr2O3 with Inferred Resources of 86.1million tonnes at 29% Cr2O3. Average mine production is running at 26% Cr2O3 with the Cr/Fe elemental weight percent ratio at 1.53.
With an on-site concentrator, Outokumpu achieves a yearly production of about 200.000 tonnes of "ore-pieces" of 12-100mm in size and through another separation process ("swim-sink-separation" plus two milling processes) another 400.000 tonnes of "fine-ore-concentrate" with Cr2O3 grades between 35% to 45%.
With this ore Outokumpu is running their own ferrochrome production at Tornio where the ore is converted into pellets (sinter process).
These ore pellets plus coal plus quarzit granules plus temperatures up to 1.700 degrees centigrade turn this mixture into ferrochrome which is used for stainless steel production.
Outokumpu has developed a new technology (chrome converter) that allows them to use fairly low-grade Cr2O3 in this process and gives them a possibility to use even this ore in a very cost-effective way for their stainless steel production.
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The more I read about chromite the more I believe that Noront with their grades and lumpy consistency will turn into a chromite mine (together with FWR and SPQ and possibly other companies with chromite finds in the RoF).
Let alone the nickel, copper and PGE potential combined with Windfall gold !
FANTOMAS
