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Northern MPP wants value-added mining – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – March 28, 2013)

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North.

Algoma-Manitoulin MPP and Ontario NDP mining critic Michael Mantha has tabled a private members bill in Queen’s Park requiring all ore from Ontario mines to be processed in the province.

In a March 27 release, Mantha said his bill entitled the “Mining Amendment Act (Resources Processed in Ontario)” would stimulate job growth and manufacturing.

“Not only does Ontario possess large deposits of minerals and ores, it also has the facilities and skills that it takes to process these raw materials right at home. This bill will enable us to take advantage of our vast natural resources, our tremendously skilled work force, and existing processing facilities.”

Mantha said if a mining company wants to process resources outside of Canada, it can ask for an exemption under the Mining Act. Cliffs Natural Resources wants to ship concentrate from its chromite deposit in the James Bay lowlands overseas to China for processing.

“The Northern economy has suffered huge losses in manufacturing and other sectors; this is a perfect opportunity to reinstate good, value-added jobs in the North,” said Mantha.

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Russia, South Africa Seek to Create OPEC-Style Platinum Bloc – by Ilya Arkhipov & Franz Wild (Bloomberg.com – March 27, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Russia and South Africa, countries that hold about 80 percent of platinum group metal reserves, plan to set up an OPEC-type trading bloc to coordinate exports.

“It can be called an OPEC,” Russian Natural Resources Minister Sergey Donskoy said late yesterday in an interview in Durban. “Our goal is to coordinate our actions accordingly to expand the markets. The price depends on the structure of the market, and we will form the structure of the market.”

South Africa mines about 70 percent of the world’s platinum and Russia 40 percent of its palladium, a metal from the same group used to cut car pollution, Johnson Matthey Plc (JMAT) said in a 2012 report. Other nations would be able to join the group. The U.S., Zimbabwe and Canada are among producers of the metals. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is an oil cartel.

Platinum and palladium prices rose following yesterday’s comments by Donskoy. South Africa and Russia signed only a “framework” accord, he said, with details yet to be decided.

“We are now forming working groups to work out joint actions on this market,” Donskoy said. “There will be a meeting in the summer to discuss mechanisms in detail.”

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Stainless steel production good fit for north: MPP – CBC News Thunder Bay (March 14, 2013)

http://www.cbc.ca/thunderbay/

Gilles Bisson says Ring of Fire deposit has all the makings to get into stainless steel production

The MPP for Timmins-James Bay continues to push for stainless steel production from future development in the Ring of Fire mineral region. Gilles Bisson said he’s been in talks with another northern MPP and with industry. All agree stainless steel is an obvious fit for the region,” he said.

“We have all of the makings in the Ring of Fire in order for us to get into stainless steel,” he said. “Stainless steel is made up what? Chromite. It’s made up of iron ore, it’s made up of nickel, all of which is in the Ring of Fire.”

Bisson also said the north could have a production advantage because those raw materials would be close to a potential processing plant.

He noted Canada is the only G8 country in the world that doesn’t make stainless steel and that Ontario’s energy policy should be overhauled to make stainless steel production more attractive to the private sector.

“There’s not hardly a jurisdiction in the world that has that advantage of … [having] everything nearby,” Bisson said. “We can bring it to one spot; we can melt it down once [and] save half the energy costs.”

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Mechanisation still far off for South Africa’s platinum mines – by Clara Ferreira-Marques and Sherilee Lakmidas (Reuters India – March 14, 2013)

http://in.reuters.com/

LONDON/MARIKANA, South Africa, March 14 (Reuters) – Rising wage costs and strikes have revived the arguments in favour of automating South Africa’s loss-making platinum mines, but weak prices for the metal and tough conditions underground mean mechanisation remains a distant prospect.

The rest of the mining industry, from copper to coal, has been transformed in recent decades by automation, unmanned trucks and remotely controlled equipment.

That is in large part thanks to geology. In the cramped mines where platinum is found, the rock is still drilled, blasted and cleared by men. The platinum seams are damp, sweltering and claustrophobic places to work: men often drill in shafts so constricted that it is like mining under a table.

Mines are evacuated for hours a day so blasting can take place – a major inefficiency for operations with the thinnest of profit margins.

But mechanising platinum would be costly and the mining companies need to be convinced it is worth it. “They would need to believe that any investment in platinum mechanisation would significantly drive them down the cost curve,” said analyst Alison Turner at Panmure Gordon.

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PDAC-Mining legend Friedland looks to burnish his image – by Euan Rocha and Rod Nickel (Reuters.com – March 6, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

TORONTO – (Reuters) – Leave it to the irreverent Robert Friedland to brighten the mood of a mining conference in the throes of a deep, collective depression.

The outspoken financier, known for his talent for picking winners in a risky business, made a rare public appearance on Monday to trumpet his latest venture, Ivanplats Ltd. It was a star turn by a man apparently unburdened by self-doubt or any lack of confidence in the industry’s resilience.

Friedland’s company, one of a handful of initial public offerings in the mining industry last year, owns South Africa’s Platreef, a project rich in platinum, palladium, gold, rhodium, nickel and copper.

Ivanplats owns the “largest mechanizable, ethical precious metal discovery in the world,” Friedland said at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention in Toronto, promising that the geological nature of the deposit would allow for more humane working conditions than those in rival South African mines.

“We’ve discovered something that is very good,” he said, “We’re quite confident that the nickel and copper values are double what we would need to recover, gold, platinum, rhodium and palladium at a negative cost.”

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NEWS RELEASE: Ring of Fire could be stainless steel powerhouse: Bisson

QUEEN’S PARK – Timmins-James Bay MPP Gilles Bisson made the following statement in the provincial legislature today about the Ring of Fire mining development.

“We’ve listened to this government now in three budgets—probably three or four—and at least two throne speeches talk about the wonderful opportunity that presents itself in the Ring of Fire in northern Ontario. We have some of the best mineralogical ability in that part of the province when it comes to chromite, when it comes to nickel, when it comes to other metals.

“We’re looking at this government and saying, ‘Where have you been for the last three or four years?’ There is an opportunity here to position Ontario as a stainless steel producer. You need chromite, you need nickel and you need iron ore, all things that belong here in Ontario, and if all we’re trying to do is to create a mine up in the Ring of Fire, I think we’re selling Ontario short. We should be trying to position this as a stainless steel play for the province of Ontario.

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NDP want northern Ontario mine to bolster local steel industry – by Jody Foster (CBC News Hamilton – February 25, 2013)

 http://www.cbc.ca/hamilton/

Changes to Mining Act required to turn Ring of Fire chromite into Ontario stainless steel

The provincial NDP wants to see a vast mineral deposit in northern Ontario used to benefit the province’s steel industry rather than offshore interests. The so-called Ring of Fire mining area in the James Bay Lowlands is believed to contain about a quarter of the world’s chromite, the main ingredient in stainless steel.

American company Cliffs Natural Resources is the biggest player in the Ring of Fire. Its most recent investor update shows nearly half of the raw ore mined in northern Ontario is destined for China, while the rest will be shipped to a proposed smelter in Sudbury.

NDP MPP Gilles Bisson said Ontario should develop its own stainess steel industry, instead of sending the raw ingredients overseas.

“Rather than having jobs at the mine and maybe 300 jobs at a ferrochrome facility [in Sudbury], we could end up having tens of thousands of jobs in the stainless steel industry,” Bisson said.

‘You can’t just feed chromite into Stelco or Dofasco’

The Timmins-James Bay MPP admits the plan would take a change in the Mining Act, allowing Ontario to force companies to process minerals within the province.

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Finland Transforms Chrome Deposits Into World’s Largest Single Site Stainless Steel Production Facility at Tornio: A History – by Jorma Kovalainen

http://www.outokumpu.com/en/Pages/default.aspx

Tornio Works History

This review was written by Mr. Jorma Kovalainen, General Manager – Special Projects. It describes the history of Outokumpu Tornio Works and our growth to the largest single site stainless steel producer in the world.

The Chrome deposit in Keminmaa was discovered in 1959 by accident, when there was a water canal under construction. Outokumpu got the ownership of the Keminmaa claim in 1960 and started to investigate the ore deposit and to develop a refining process for the metal.

The same year, Outokumpu engaged the first engineer (Siltari) to develop the idea of starting a stainless steel production sometime in the future, while Outokumpu already had some nickel production.

After extensive research and development work, Outokumpu decided in 1964 to invest in ferrochrome, and the production started in Tornio in 1968. A lot of research and development of enriching and metallurgy was needed because the chrome ore was in oxide form that was not refined anywhere else in the world. Similar development was earlier done with copper and nickel productions: in all three cases, Outokumpu has taken in use its own, patented production technology.

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Frozen out of the Ring of Fire – by David McLaren (Sudbury Star – February 16, 2013)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The Ring of Fire — it sounds like something out of a Tolkien novel.

Welcome to Mordor, Ont., an area of 5,120 square kilometres in the James Bay watershed chock full of nickel, copper, zinc, gold, palladium and chromium — especially chromium.

The Lords of the Ring are some 30 exploration companies, such as KWG Resources and Noront Resources, which have staked more than 31,000 claims. Cliffs Natural Resources from Ohio is the principal mining company. They’re after chromium, a vital ingredient in stainless steel. (Cliffs is proposing build a chromite smelter in Capreol, creating 400 to 500 jobs).

But others are coming in, including the Chinese state-owned Sinocan Resources Corp. The Crown, in this realm, has two heads: Stephen Harper and Kathleen Wynne.

Ottawa has responsibility for some environmental oversight through the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and Ontario collects royalties, or will after the 10-year tax holiday it gives remote mines.

In fact, Ontario’s mining tax regime is so generous compared to other provinces that it amounts to a subsidy. (Throw in the oilsands and the Crown gives more money to mining companies than it spends on First Nations health, education and housing.) And the federal government’s recent omnibus bills have so severely crippled its environmental regulatory muscle that you might as well hang a sign on the north that says, “(Ring of ) Fire Sale”.

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Mines minister defends Cliffs’ processing plan – CBC News Thunder Bay (February 15, 2013)

http://www.cbc.ca/thunderbay/

Michael Gravelle responds to criticism that more than half of chromite to leave province

Ontario’s mines minister says if more than half the chromite mined in the Ring of Fire is processed in Ontario, that’s a lot better than none. On Thursday, NDP MPP Gilles Bisson criticized a plan by Cliffs Natural Resources to ship the rest of its ore to China.

Michael Gravelle says the processor to be built in Sudbury will create hundreds of new jobs plus spin-off jobs.

“[If the proposal is successful], what we’re going to be seeing … [is] the first ferrochrome processing facility in North America,” Gravelle said. “We’re going to see value-added opportunity in the province of Ontario that was never there before.”

Gravelle added that shipping ore to other jurisdictions for processing is not uncommon.

He said ore from other countries and provinces is processed in Ontario.

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Distressed PGMs sector’s ‘crisis’ can be resolved – analyst – by Nomvelo Buthelezi (MiningWeekly.com February 8, 2013)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

The South African platinum mining industry – which hosts about 80% of the world’s resources – is in some distress, with the challenges it is experiencing including sluggish demand and significant amounts of the precious metal being brought back onto the market through recycling, increasing operating costs, greater stakeholder expectations, inadequate funds for capital expenditure projects and the need to improve extraction efficiencies as deposits are becoming deeper and more complex to mine.

But Cadiz Corporate Solutions mining and resources division manager Peter Major is adamant that “the platinum industry crisis” is not that bad, averring that “it is not a meltdown and there are ways through which the platinum industry can recover”.

He believes that the industry “can survive at the current platinum price of $1 700/oz. “The crisis can be resolved. The state of the industry is the result of a very positive macro environment – the industry grew too fast and, with the money that was coming in, overexpenditure took place,” Major tells Mining Weekly.

But professional services firm Deloitte’s Ebrahim Takolia stresses that companies need to assess all aspects of their operating costs and capital expenditure and improve extracting efficiencies, wherever possible, without compromising on safety, the long-term viability of platinum reserves or the industry.

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Cynthia Carroll: Rough ride ends for the ‘outsider’ at Anglo American – by Tom Bawden (The Independent – February 10, 2013)

http://www.independent.co.uk/

She suffered sexism in the City, but there were highs

In one of the most infamous business interviews of recent times, Anglo American’s Cynthia Carroll was written off by a former deputy chairman of her company in a few harsh words. “This woman’s hopeless,” he said.

As chief executive of South Africa’s Anglo American, which is listed in London, Carroll is the ultimate outsider doing what has been dubbed the “toughest job in mining”.

So, in some ways at least, it’s probably safe to assume she is looking fondly towards life after Friday, when she is scheduled to make her final public appearance for the company. She announces annual results for the sixth and last time before stepping down from the helm on 3 April.

Carroll was Anglo American’s first female – and first non-South African – chief executive. If that wasn’t enough, she came to the top job from outside Anglo American, where the tradition had previously been to hand the position to a well-groomed insider.

She was finally forced to resign in October after months of pressure from shareholders, who are likely to feel vindicated by the latest set of results.

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South Africa Faces Tax Dilemma as Mining Industry Costs Soar – by Mike Cohen & Paul Burkhardt (Bloomberg.com – February 5, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

South Africa’s government faces a dilemma: how to help mining companies weather surging costs and depressed commodity prices as the ruling African National Congress seeks to wring more revenue from the industry.

Upheaval has plagued platinum and gold producers since August last year, when thousands of workers staged a series of illegal strikes, winning pay increases of as much as 22 percent. Adding to mining costs, Eskom Holdings Ltd., which supplies about 95 percent of South Africa’s power, is seeking 16 percent average annual tariff increases until 2018 to fund expansion.

While Mining Minister Susan Shabangu says the government is committed to working with the industry, the ruling ANC wants the country to derive greater benefit from its minerals. At a conference in December, the party said a “resource-rent” tax, or higher royalties, were under consideration.

“I’m quite worried,” Nick Holland, the chief executive officer of Gold Fields Ltd. (GFI), Africa’s No. 2 gold producer, said in an interview yesterday at the Investing in African Mining Indaba, a gathering of more than 7,500 industry executives. “We can ill afford to accept any taxes beyond what we have. It’s just going to increase the speed of the decline of the mining industry.”

Mining output slumped 11 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in the three months through November from the prior three months, government data show. Nine loss-making platinum-mine shafts were shut in the second half of 2012, according to the Department of Mineral Resources, while Anglo American Platinum Ltd. (AMS), the largest producer, last month announced plans to idle four shafts, which may result in as many as 14,000 job losses.

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Fool’s platinum? – Asteroid mining (The Economist – January 24, 2013)

http://www.economist.com/

IT ISN’T a gold rush quite yet. But the launch of a second asteroid-mining venture in a year suggests that the allure of extra-terrestrial prospecting may be as hard to resist for some as the Klondike was. On January 22nd a Californian start-up called Deep Space Industries entered the fray. It joins Planetary Resources, a firm backed by Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, which promised to have its first asteroid-hunting spacecraft in orbit by the end of 2014.

The potential bonanza is, well, astronomical. A single 500-metre metal-rich asteroid might contain the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals mined to date. Even humble ice could sustain astronauts or be processed into rocket fuel for future missions to Mars.

Deep Space Industries might be dreaming big but it is starting small. Smaller still, in fact, than the relatively puny Planetary Resources. The company is aiming to raise a mere $3m this year from venture capitalists, angels and private-equity funds, and another $10m next year. It will spend the money designing, building and launching a fleet of three single-use spacecraft, dubbed Firefly, to conduct fly-bys of small asteroids.

Planetary Resources, by comparison, intends to launch several constellations of tiny spacecraft into Earth orbit, where they will spend years observing and cataloguing nearby rocks.

The idea is to build Firefly on the cheap, forgoing extensive testing and using commercial off-the-shelf components rather than custom-built electronics. To reduce costs further, it will fly alongside larger payloads on scheduled flights.

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The Duluth [nickel/copper/PGMs] monster – by John Chadwick (International Mining – February 2013)

http://www.im-mining.com/

John Chadwick looks at the Duluth Complex and in particular the leading positions of PolyMet and Duluth Metals. Duluth has described the complex as holding “one of the world’s largest undeveloped strategic metals deposits of it’s kind”

Duluth Metals massive potential in Minnesota was described in the December 2012 Leader. Let’s take a more detailed look at what is there. The industry has perhaps not yet realised the magnitude of the work being done and discoveries made by Duluth Metals here.

Duluth Metals’ strategy is to “systematically explore and develop copper-nickel-PGM deposits in the north of the US State of Minnesota.” With its partner Antofagasta (which holds 40%, with Duluth holding 60%) it is progressing Twin Metals Minnesota’s project through feasibility into production.

Twin Metals is focused on three deposits, Spruce Road, Maturi and Birch Lake (running northwest to southeast) in the northern part of the Duluth Intrusive Complex. These deposits are located in a zone of copper-nickel-PGM mineralisation occurring near the base of the complex at depths of 130 m to 1,300 m. Bechtel will deliver a very detailed prefeasibility study (enabling fairly quick progress to a BFS) in 2014. Bechtel Engineering was instructed to prepare the NI-43-101 PFS on the Twin Metals (formerly known as Nokomis) project based on the following parameters:

■ A vertically integrated mining complex

■ Large scale phased underground mine plan and development

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