http://www.thesudburystar.com/2018/02/03/sudbury-accent-no-weakness-in-citys-bid

Sudbury Accent: No 'weakness' in city's bid

By Mary Katherine Keown, The Sudbury Star

Saturday, February 3, 2018 12:35:13 EST AM

Mayor Brian Bigger visited the Outokumpu ferrochrome production facility in Tornio, Finland with Ward 6 Coun. Rene Lapierre, Chief Ted Roque of the Wahnapitae First Nation, as well as several city hall staffers

On the heels of his fact-finding mission to Finland, Mayor Brian Bigger is really excited about Sudbury's bid to host the Noront Resources ferrochrome production facility.

For one thing, there is already a skilled and knowledgeable work force in Sudbury that supports eight mines, two smelters and two mills.

"There is a lot of expertise within our community to support that kind of operation," Bigger said this week. "We're familiar with these types of operations in Sudbury. We understand what's required to support that kind of business."

Sudbury is also well positioned to host the smelter. The city is at the junction of the CN and CP rail lines - "nowhere else in Canada do you see that," Bigger said - and is on the TransCanada Highway. Currently, a road is planned to connect the Ring of Fire, located in northwestern Ontario, to the country's main rail lines.

"We're on the main rail line, so it makes it a relatively easy connection," Bigger said.

Bigger, who visited the Outokumpu ferrochrome production facility in Tornio, Finland with Ward 6 Coun. Rene Lapierre, Chief Ted Roque of the Wahnapitae First Nation, as well as several city hall staffers, said following their trans-Atlantic trip that he is convinced Sudbury should be home to Noront's ferrochrome smelter. The Outokumpu plant uses the same closed furnace technology that Noront is proposing.

"We wanted to ensure we had the strongest bid possible, and that comes from the best understanding of the technology that Noront Resources has identified," Bigger said. "The second reason we went was to ensure that we're doing the right thing in welcoming a ferrochrome plant to our community."

As Bigger pointed out, Finland has some of the strictest environmental regulations in the European Union.

Lapierre travelled with the group in his role as chair of the board of health. He spoke with several people in Finland and said the moonscapes that defined Sudbury for much of the 20th century are unlikely to be replicated. He has no concerns about the smelter or its impacts to the local environment.

"Based on the information we were able to gather with my discussion with health officials and the director of health and social services for Tornio, I feel the risks associated with the style of smelter used in Outokumpu is very low, therefore would not be of concern to our residents," he said. "Outokumpu has been doing annual and some biannual environmental assessments. They test water, aquatic life, plants, animals, some grubs and more to see if there are any changes to the surroundings of the smelter. "¦ They have not had any environmental changes to these due to the smelting process."

The group spoke with dozens of stakeholders in Tornio and the process is safe, Lapierre added.

"From the discussion with local officials and staff and environmental experts at Outokumpu the system they use is very safe," he noted. "Not only is it safe for the environment, but for the workers who are part of the processing the risks for danger are low. Where there are any inclinations of higher risk the company is a large advocate of employee safety and all the proper personal protective equipment is issued to mitigate the risks."

While there have been concerns about the safety of hexavalent chromium, Bigger said chromium-6 is not part of the processing at the Outokumpu smelter.

"Chromium-6 is not produced by the process," Bigger said. "(Noront's) processes do not create any hazardous materials out of that process. That's why it is the best technology in the world and that's why we feel comfortable welcoming this plant into our community."

Bigger said the trip cost taxpayers $15,000-20,000. But it was money well spent.

"I have no concerns," he said. "That's the level of confidence I wanted to come back with, with the entire team. We asked questions of all of the people we met, looking for any concerns whatsoever on their part. We found none. On my part, I have full confidence in welcoming a ferrochrome facility into our community. I think it'll go well with our plans to diversify our economy and attract investment to create jobs. It fits in with the long-term strategy of growing our community."

The city filed its bid Friday for the $1 billon facility that would process ore from the mineral-rich Ring of Fire area in northwestern Ontario. So far, deposits of chromite, nickel-copper-platinum-palladium and copper-zinc have been found in the area. Noront Resources is a Toronto-based mining company and has the largest land position in the Ring of Fire; on their website, the company says it has acquired more than 80 per cent of all claims in the district. It has ownership or a controlling interest in all the major discoveries to date in the region.

Three other cities, including Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins and Thunder Bay, are also in the running for the smelter. The construction of the ferrochrome production facility is proposed to begin within the next five to 10 years. It would create about 350 permanent and about 150 indirect jobs within the community, and would be located in Coniston.

"The ferrochrome facility would cost about $1 billion and take three years to build. The plant would provide approximately 1,200 jobs during construction and about 350 full-time jobs for operation," Stan Sudol, who manages the Republic of Mining website (republicofmining.com) and works as a communications consultant for the mining industry, told The Star. "And don't forget those 350 direct jobs would probably result in an additional 500 to 700 service support jobs in the community's world-class mining supply and service sector."

The ferrochrome smelter in Tornio has birthed an entire ecosystem of mining supply companies, Bigger said, and the spinoff benefits in Sudbury could be equally significant.

"The ferrochrome furnace will also complement and build on the smelting/refining and metallurgical expertise that already exists in Sudbury with the Vale nickel smelter and refinery, and the Glencore nickel smelter," Sudol noted. "I might add there is no other region in Canada that boasts the concentration or cluster of mines, mills, smelters and one refinery. It is something that is rather unique and we should be rightly proud of as our poly-metallic mines - nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum group metals and others - will play a vital role in supplying the key metals companies like Tesla, Ford and GM need to build the electric vehicles of the future."

If Sudbury wins the lottery, the smelter could prompt new mining supply companies, which could solidify the Nickel City's reputation as an expert in all things mining.

"The economic impact is extremely large," Lapierre said. "One company who builds and designs various steel drill bits for mining, as well as other steel tools for the smelting process, has sales of more than $60 million and that was only one of the companies we visited."

Sudol said the production facility could actually undo some of the population decline the Nickel City has experienced in recent years.

"The economic growth that would accompany the ferrochrome plant would help stem the continuing population decline in the Sudbury region and provide many well-paying jobs for younger workers who would like to stay in the community and raise their families," he noted.

"Let's remember the two smelters - Vale's Copper Cliff and Glencore's Falconbridge, which were built in the 1930s - and the Vale refinery, built in 1973, have provided middle-class jobs for many, many generations of Sudburians. This facility would also provide long-term, multi-generational prosperity for the community."

Bigger said Sudbury's bid could be the strongest of the four. While Thunder Bay is closer to the Ring of Fire - the deposits are just 500 km northeast of the city in the James Bay lowlands region - it is not a mining community.

"I don't believe we have any significant weaknesses; we have a very strong proposal," Bigger noted.

Sudol said none of the other cities vying for the smelter have easy access to the railway and only one has any history with mining.

"Unfortunately, Thunder Bay doesn't have a direct class one rail link due to the fact that the Kinghorn rail line between that city and Longlac (275 km) - which is close to where the chromite ore will be loaded onto rail - has been dismantled. And that community doesn't have a history of mineral processing like both Sudbury and Timmins," Sudol pointed out. "Timmins, like Sudbury, has a long history of mineral processing; however, it is also not serviced by a class one rail link and is unfortunately too far north. Why add the additional distance when Sudbury is a few hundred kilometres closer to your main markets in the USA? While the Sault Ste. Marie location on the Great Lakes is a definite plus, the community is also not connected by a class one rail line, doesn't have the historical mining expertise that we have in Sudbury and shockingly has a small but vocal group of individuals who are questioning whether the facility would be a good fit for the community on environmental issues."

Sudol believes Sudbury is the right choice for the ferrochrome smelter.

"The facility in Finland does not have a detrimental effect on their local environment or workers. It will be the same in Sudbury," he said. "Sudbury is serviced by two class one rail lines, has a number of brownfield sites that can be used to construct and expand the facility and has no issues with power availability.

"With strategic clusters of mine supply and services, mining education - two colleges and a university - and a wide assortment of underground, metallurgical, environmental, and health and safety research in the community, Noront can take advantage of more than 135 years of mining expertise that is unmatched anywhere else in Northern Ontario or the entire country for that matter.

"And generations of Sudburians understand and are welcoming to the mining and refining sector. In my somewhat subjective opinion - I was born and raised in Sudbury - there are no weaknesses. Let's also remember that Sudbury was Cliffs original choice due to its central rail location, ease of access to power, and mining and metallurgical expertise bar none"

A ferrochrome smelter ultimately prepares and transforms chromite ore deposits into 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 ground and put through an arc furnace 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 industrial regions in the northeast United States, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, to make stainless steel. Currently, companies get their ferrochrome from Africa and Asia.

"The ferrochrome product would initially be used in the American stainless steel market to displace higher-cost ferrochrome imported from South Africa. But there is a huge, huge potential of doubling the size of the facility and direct and indirect jobs when the market warrants with sales to Europe and Asia," Sudol said. "The other attractiveness of a Sudbury/Northern Ontario location is security of supply for this strategic material. Ferrochrome is a critical material for stainless steel production and a host of other uses, including military products.

"The current primary sources of this material - South Africa and Kazakhstan - are not the most politically stable jurisdictions. Stainless steel manufacturers in the United States would probably be overjoyed to be able to secure competitively priced strategic ferrochrome from a politically stable economic partner like Canada."

As Bigger pointed out, there are several advantages to hosting the smelter. In addition to the increased tax base from the smelter and any spinoff businesses that pop up, the slag from processing - which is benign - could be used on the city's roads.

"The slag is used as an engineered aggregate for road construction," he said. "That could be a significant opportunity in Sudbury in road construction. The roads are excellent and the engineered aggregates they make from the slag are benign, so it's safe for the environment. The slag is part of their secret to these roads. They're 100 km south of the Arctic Circle, so they have freeze-thaws and the cold weather like we have."

Since Sudbury would be adopting the same processes as the Outokumpu plant, adding ferrochrome slag to our roadways is "absolutely" something Sudbury could do, Bigger said.

There seems to be significant public support for the arc furnace. The Greater Sudbury Development Corporation engaged Oraclepoll Research to undertake a survey of residents to assess support for the construction of the smelter. A 77 per cent majority of those surveyed support the facility.

"The Greater Sudbury Development Corporation understands that this facility is a 'once-in-a-generation' opportunity for our city," board chair Wendy Watson said Thursday. "We were happy to support the work of economic development staff as they short-listed potential sites and undertook specific analyses to bolster the business case for a Greater Sudbury location."

Noront Resources has said it is committed to environmental sustainability and will conduct a comprehensive environmental assessment on the selected site.

"Simply by being recognized as the preferred location for a plant for all of the reasons that are strong and compelling - the skilled and talented workforce, support businesses and mining service and supply companies, the availability of land, transportation networks and electricity "¦ it would be significant to Sudbury to be identified as that location," Bigger said. "It builds off our skills and talent base, but it also is diversifying into other spinoff businesses."