Some feel Timmins is the ultimate choice as Glencore is in town.

http://www.kiddoperations.ca/EN/Pages/home.aspx

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http://www.timminspress.com/2017/05/11/timmins-one-of-four-in-the-running-for-noront-plant

 

SAULT STE. MARIE - Timmins remains one of four Northern Ontario communities NorOnt Resources is considering for its ferrochrome facility.

The company is expected to decide by the end of summer where that facility will be built.

Top executives from the operation were in Sault Ste. Marie Wednesday meeting with community leaders and the Chamber of Commerce members outlining their plans and how the Ring of Fire development can provide an economic boost to Northern Ontario communities.

Alan Coutts, president and CEO of NorOnt Resources said he wants communities to understand the company and its capabilities and have the supports in place if the community is chosen to host the first ferrochrome facility in North America.

A skilled workforce that understands the process of melting molten and smeltering processes is an asset and the land size, infrastructure and costs are also factors under consideration, he said.

Coutts added, however, at this time, there is no preferred city to host the site.

A ferrochrome facility ultimately prepares and transforms the chromite ore deposits to ferrochrome, the product used to create stainless steel products.

Ferrochrome is created with iron, chrome and oxygen. The high-grade chromite ore taken from the Ring of Fire area is grinded and put through a processing plant that requires high levels of energy to melt the ore and add carbon to separate the oxygen from the iron and chrome. The completed iron and chrome product is called ferrochrome.

The ferrochrome would be exported to the industrial regions in the Northeast United States, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, to make stainless steel. Currently companies there get their ferrochrome from South Africa and Pakistan.

“The big advantage is if we can produce ferrochrome in North America, relatively close to the market, we can undercut the imports coming from South Africa and Pakistan. That’s the business case,” Coutts said.

Sault Ste. Marie has the potential makings for a ferrochrome facilities. It has land zoned for heavy industrial use, it’s close to transportation networks and has the skilled workforce available to fill the needed jobs. Community support and partnerships are other necessary key ingredients that need to be factored into the mix and weighed against other Northern communities also in the running for the $1-billion facility.

In addition to Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins is competing with Sudbury and Thunder Bay-Fort William for the plant.

While the plant had originally been targetted for Sudbury by Cliffs Natural Resources, the buyout of the company by NorOnt altered those plans.

Coutts said NorOnt’s plans are “a little more modest” than that of the larger-scaled Cliffs, and are more heavily focused on entering into the U.S. market.

He said community buy-in to the plant is paramount, especially because it will take a lot of time to get environmental assessments completed and proper ministry permits approved.

But nothing can be done until the provincial government determines where roads should be built to the Ring of Fire area and the infrastructure is in place to get to the mineral deposits, Coutts added.

NorOnt is urging the province to come to a conclusion about where the road should be built to connect to the nearest highway, about 280 kilometres away and move forward with the infrastructure to make it a reality.

Coutts said he understands the importance of working with communities but argues that after a certain amount of dialogue, a decision has got to be made.

“Trying to find the perfect consensus that 100% of people agree upon, is a difficult thing, no matter what project you’re talking about,” he said. “At a certain point in time, government has got to show its leadership where they table a proposal” and fine tune it from there.

NorOnt has already spent about $10 million developing a proposed east-west route that accesses the majority of communities and leads to the Eagle’s Nest mine.

Coutts said that while it may seem years away that the facility is actually needed, the process itself is complicated and will take a lot of time to move forward through the detailed engineering, design and ministry approval process.

“One of the big things that we are aware of, is getting a ferrochrome permit, a smelter permit essentially, is a complex process and hasn’t been done since the mid 1980s. This will be a long process and we need to get ahead of the ball,” Coutts said.

The byproducts of the process include slag and greenhouse gas emissions will fall under the new cap and trade legislation.

Stephen Flewelling, chief development officer at NorOnt said the engineering work could take years to develop, and costs for the facility could reach $100 million.

“We will work with the community to design that plant,” Flewelling said. “There will be multiple stages to design the plant and do feasibility studies so we want to be sure we are working with the right community partner before we release that work and try to get the proposal right to build the facility.”

Community reception of the plant is paramount, Flewelling said.

“We want a community that understands what a ferrochrome community is and wants to have it,” he said.

The business support is also important, he said.

The state-of-the art facility will need a comprehensive, skilled workforce and it’s expected that about 350 direct jobs – paying salaries of up to $130,000 per year — could be created at the outset, with about another 150 indirect area jobs also created.

“All this starts with the decision on the roads. Unless we get clarity on who is building it, how it’s getting financed and when its starting, we can’t do a lot of the other activities like get the financing or do the engineering,” NorOnt said.

If a road plan is settled this year, it’s anticipated that construction for a ferrochrome facility would start in 2020 and take about five to seven years to complete.

The first project would focus on the nickel deposit and the second would be the chromite mine, Flewelling said.

The overall land mass needed would be about 125 acres and the plant itself encompassing about 24 acres of that land, Flewelling said. The first phase of the plant is expected to cost about $1 billion.

NorOnt Resources is a Canadian-based mining company and has the largest land position in the Ring of Fire. It has ownership or a controlling interest in all the major discoveries to date in the region.