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An iron ore project in northeastern Canada whose proponent is calling “the next Consolidated Thompson,” has taken an important step forward.
Alderon Iron Ore Corp. (TSE:ADV) announced today it has begun filing material to start the federal and provincial environmental assessment process. The application would allow Alderon to double future annual production at its Kami Project in Quebec-Labrador to 16 million tonnes of iron ore concentrate annually.
“We included the planned expansion to 16 million tonnes in the Registration Documents based on our confidence in the size and quality of Alderon’s resource combined with a robust iron ore market that will allow Alderon to build a long life mining operation and use the cash flow from its initial phase to fund a rapid expansion,” Alderon CEO Tayfun Eldern said in a statement.
The company’s shares were up 1.12% to close at $2.70 on Tuesday.
Vancouver-based Alderon’s Kami Project, located in the Labrador Trough mining district, is surrounded by four producing open-pit iron ore mines operated by: Rio Tinto-Iron Ore Company of Canada, Cliffs Natural Resources-Wabush Mines, and Arcelormittal.
The Kami project lies six kilometres south of the Wabush Mines iron ore mine.
Alderon’s plan is to ship the material to the port of Sept Îles for export to Asia via common rail carrier. Powerlines running from Churchill Falls hydroelectric power station are located 15 kilometres from the Kami property.
A preliminary economic assessment released in September envisions an 8 million tonne per year open-cast mine operation with a minelife of 15.3 years. Production is slated to start in 2015.
The cost of the project, including the mine, concentrator, tailings facility, rail and port infrastructure, is pegged at $989 million, excluding closure costs, sustaining capital and equipment leases. The total cost is expected to exceed $1 billion considering the company is planning a port expansion to allow loading of 300,000-tonne Capesize bulk carriers.
The PEA is based on mining the Rose Central deposit which has an indicated iron ore resource of 376 million tonnes at 29.8% iron and an inferred iron ore resource of 46 million tonnes at 29.8% iron. The total indicated resource at Kami is estimated at 490 million tonnes at 30.0% iron, and an additional inferred resource of 118 million tonnes at 30.3% iron.
The Montreal Gazette reported Alderon COO Brian Penney saying in September that “Kami with annual capacity of 8 million tonnes of high-grade ore is the next major new project to move after Consolidated Thompson – which started up last year with the same capacity and is now doubling it.”
Consolidated Thompson was bought out by Cliffs Natural Resources for US$5 billion in 2010.
2 Comments
Ak
Is gold going back to $ 2,000 level ?
http://www.intellidrives.com/
Zliv
It seems that more and more large iron ore deposits are fond in many countries, Canada, many Africa countries. And big projects are in schedule, monopoly will be broken. But will the price descend for long?