Also, here’s about as detailed an accounting of what Noront has told us about the Sault plant as we can muster
Fifteen months after Sudbury was rejected as the future home of a billion-dollar Noront Resources Ltd. smelter, it appears the Nickel City may yet win a skinny-downed slice of ferrochrome pie.
Before building its controversial ferrochrome processing plant in Sault Ste. Marie, Noront wants to test its technology with a small-scale demonstration plant. Greater Sudbury is under consideration as the prototype’s location.
This previously undisclosed part of Noront’s plans was one of many new details that surfaced during six hours of formal and informal presentations by executives of the junior mining company late last month in the Sault. The tsunami of new information, released in a widely-criticized format, went largely unreported in media reports.
“Typically what you’ll do is you’ll take ore samples and you will set up a plant that replicates the major plant on a small scale,” Stephen Flewelling, the company’s chief development officer, told city councillors. “You will run that plant to understand how it works with actual material and what the waste products of it are,” Flewelling said.
Falconbridge, Ont. – birthplace of Canadian ferrochrome
Back in 2015, Noront’s acquisition of Cliffs Natural Resources’ Ring of Fire chromite assets for a bargain-basement $US20 million came with a big technology bonus. Cliffs had already spent $100 million building a pilot plant in Falconbridge, Ont. that produced the first-ever Canadian ferrochrome in 2011.
For the rest of this article: https://www.sootoday.com/local-news/noront-considers-building-small-scale-ferrochrome-pilot-plant-in-sudbury-1763583