Sioux-to-Soo route stokes flames for ring of fire ferrochrome smelter: Sault EDC boss makes northwest trip to study Sioux Lookout transload facility.

• Position: Dryden-Sioux Lookout

There is a "Sioux-to-Sault" campaign in the works to move Ring of Fire ore to a processing plant in Sault Ste. Marie.

In June, Tom Dodds, the head of Sault Ste. Marie's Economic Development Corporation, flew up to Sioux Lookout to tour a future industrial site where business and community leaders there want to establish a truck-to-rail transfer facility to receive Ring of Fire chromite and ship it to a proposed smelter to be located somewhere in the North.

The previous month, the Town of Sioux Lookout announced Sault Ste. Marie is coming on board to support its transload facility plan.

A June 2 tour was arranged for some business partners--including Noront Resources and CN Rail --to view an undeveloped site on the Sioux Lookout's east side, the preferred spot for a transload facility.

There's been no official word from Noront on where its smelter will eventually go, but company president-CEO Al Coutts made a presentation in Sioux Lookout to the project partners the same day.

Noront, the largest claim holder in the Ring of Fire, is studying four cities in the North--the Sault, Sudbury, Timmins and Thunder Bay-Fort William First Nation--as the potential home for the processing plant.

The company previously said it expects to officially select a site by summer's end.

The mine developer acquired the chromite properties of Cliffs Natural Resources when the Ohio miner exited Ontario in 2015.

Noront also sits on a newly formed working group looking at the feasibility of the transload facility.

In an email, Noront spokeswoman Janice Mandei said the fact that Coutts and the Sault EDC appeared at this event in Sioux Lookout shouldn't be construed as the company making an announcement on the location of a ferrochrome smelter.

"Al is making a presentation, but there's definitely no decision (regarding) a ferrochrome smelting facility. The Soo economic development advisor, Tom Dodds, is attending as they're interested in the transload facility, but that's all."

The Integrated Transportation System being championed by Sioux Lookout and the Township of Pickle Lake is built around an east-west road corridor and a transload facility on CN's main line at Sioux Lookout.

Conceivably, ore from Noront's proposed Black Bird chromite mine would be trucked down a more than 200-kilometre-long road corridor to Sioux Lookout where it would be loaded onto...