"Only at that time Noront would make its mind up as to how it would tackle that project.
There would be money flowing in from the nickel ore so things would be more flexible "

I think this will morph into the end product a lot sooner than that, Ed.

The people running this thing are not stupid, even though we, as unhappy armchair quarterbacks, are often inclined to portray them as idiots.

The important thing at the moment is to take this forward to the permitting stage.

Permitting the upgrade in existing winter routes should be relatively easy, as it will definately have the support of locals, and should see mimimal resistance from environmentalists. This brings them as far as Webequie Junction. The remaining 90km to Eaglr's nest is virgin territory. The easiest way to permit this stretch would be the combination winter access/ slurry line, as it would have minimum impact environmentally.

Once permitting is in place, and construction begins (remember, the winter road will have to precede the slurry line), how difficult would it be to suddenly find the slurry line to be uneconomical or impractical, and seek to upgrade the winter road to an all season one.

Also co-incidental to the new permit, would come changes to the mine plan to adapt it to chromite mining as well as nickel.

As it stands now, with the above changes, Not will be shipping nickel, and could well be shipping chromite, at least a year before CLF. If CLF runs into difficulty in this permitting stage, which they undoubtedly are going to do, that year could extend itself to two or three. In three years Noront would be approaching their payback point, and would be a producer that even CLF probably couldn't afford.

Best regards

K