Local miners aim to cash in on lucrative niobium market with mines in B.C., Nebraska
Copper, gold and metallurgical coal – these are the bread and butter of B.C.’s mining industry. Now, with its proposed niobium mine, Taseko Mines Ltd. (TSX:TKO) wants to put some jam on the table.
Taseko recently entered the environmental review process for a proposed new $870 million niobium mine on Steve Creek, a tributary of the Ospika River, 140 kilometres north of Mackenzie, B.C.
Should Taseko’s Aley mine ever be built, it would be one of only four operating niobium mines in the world – unless competitors, such as Vancouver’s NioCorp Developments (TSX-V:NB), can beat Taseko to the punch.
“All of a sudden now, British Columbia has the potential to become one of the very few producers of niobium,” said Brian Battison, Taseko’s vice-president of corporate affairs.
Ferroniobium (FeNb) is something of a supermetal. Rare and valuable, it is light, but strong, highly resistant to heat and has anticorrosive properties. That makes it a valuable alloy in specialty metals, from the fans used in the turbines of jet engines to pipelines and the superconducting magnets used in the Large Hadron Collider.
But there is also a growing demand for it in automobile manufacturing and bridge construction, because very small amounts of FeNb can dramatically lower the weight of steel without sacrificing strength.
“While there is a limited number of producers in the world, there is an increasing demand for the product,” Battison said. “And there will be an even greater increase in demand for the product when [other] suppliers come on stream because it gives metal producers, manufacturers of steel … a greater security of supply.”
There are only three FeNb mines in the world today. One is the Niobec mine in Quebec, which Toronto-based gold miner IAMGOLD (TSX:IMG) recently sold to Magris Resources Inc. for $500 million.
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