You have hit on a topic that has been mostly avoided in particular by Freewest and Cliffs in their pr war.
It is not the size of the resource that is most important here but the ability to produce at lowest cost and being able to sell it.
With my limited knowledge of the resources, Noront's appears to be the one of better quality. I mean percentage wise and other metal benefits, that it should be the one to produce at the lowest cost. So from my perspective Cliffs or anyone else should be going after Noront's chromite before any other.

The reason why they are going after Freewest's is that it requires a smaller cash outlay to control a bigger sized resource. I think they are not looking at just this one segment of the chromite but all of it in the Ring and by controlling the biggest piece they obtain a strangle hold on the whole ring, chromite wise.

I expect sooner or later a biggie to come along and take the whole thing from Cliffs or Noront and produce during poor economic times or just hold from the market during good economic times until the lower grade resources are nearly exhausted.