The ROF is not exactly located in God's green acre and needs a lot of cash to finance the access and infrastructure to pull the ore out of the ground and get it to markets. And for those of you that haven't been in tune with the ROF activity, I will summarize from a piece put together by Professor Bill in Canada - a renegade investor at large.

New York Stock Exchange-listed Cliffs Natural Resources, the principal supplier of coal and iron to the continent's steel makers for almost two centuries, has determined that a domestic and export ferro-chrome business may now be profitably developed. The North American business unit is comprised of six iron ore mines owned or managed in Michigan, Minnesota and Eastern Canada, and two coking coal mining complexes locatedin West Virginia and Alabama. The Asia Pacific business unit is comprised of two iron ore mining complexes in Western Australia and a 45% economic interest in a coking and thermal coal mine in Queensland, Australia. The South American business unit includes a 30% interest in the Amapá Project, an iron ore project in the state of Amapá in Brazil. Over recent years, Cliffs has been executing a strategy designed to achieve scale in the mining industry and focused on serving the world’s largest and fastest growing steel markets.

Cliffs has chosen KWG Resources Inc as the vehicle to initiate organization of a development plan which includes a 300 mile railroad and a ferro-chrome refinery. KWG has created Canada Chrome Corporation as a wholly-owned subsidiary to be the financing and development arm. KWG is a mineral exploration company with extensive claim holdings in the James Bay Lowlands of Northern Ontario, Canada, where important discoveries of nickel and chrome have been made recently in the Ring of Fire. KWG has an equal joint venture interest in a large claim block in the central part of the discovery area, with Spider Resources Inc. The joint venture is developing the Big Daddy chromite deposit adjacent to the Black Thor and Black Label chromite discoveries of Freewest Resources. KWG holds a 1% net smelter royalty in all three deposits and has created Canada Chrome Corporation to pursue the development of them.

KWG’s Canada Chrome Corporation has recently engaged Krech Ojard & Associates, P.A. of Duluth, Minnesota to provide engineering services for the construction of a new 350km (210 mi) railroad link to the Ring of Fire. Krech Ojard is a railroad engineering and construction firm that has completed a number of projects with KWG’s principal shareholder Cliffs Natural Resources (NYSE: CLF) (Paris: CLF). Krech Ojard has identified and field refined a proposed route and is undertaking additional surveys to determine the final alignment. A feasibility study will then be completed prior to moving into the next phases of the project .

KWG is planning to develop the chromite deposit into a mine in the James Bay Lowlands. Canada Chrome Corp. would run the mine and a proposed 350-kilometre long ore haul railroad from McFauld's Lake to a junction near the village of Nakina in northwestern Ontario. Thunder Bay and other municipalities are angling to be the host community for the ore processing facilities to make ferrochrome, used in the stainless steel production.

The entire mining and mill project is estimated at $1.5 billion, with a substantial amount coming from Cliffs Natural Resources. The current market price for the players discussed above can be found by clicking onto the links below: