My personal belief is that Noront thinking or planning on becoming a producing mining company is 'hog wash'.
These are the same people who say Cliffs with all their cash and profitability can't be a serious factor in the ROF. Are they serious? Cliffs is so much larger and financial stronger than Noront they wouldn't be allowed in the same sandbox.
Noront is an exploration company with defined and inferred resources which will be sold to the highest bidder once they are proven to be 'economic'. That's the only game in town for Noront and the BOD know this. Everything else is positioning and 'blowing smoke'.
Get the exploration results out and add to the value in the ground to start the ball rolling with interested Majors.