Thunder Bay makes smelter pitch: mine developer expected to pick processor site in late 2017.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Mining

Thunder Bay and Fort William First Nation made a joint push in mid-July to be the host site for a ferrochrome smelter serving the Ring of Fire.

Economic development officials took representatives from Noront Resources, the biggest claimholder in the Far North mineral belt, on a tour of area industrial sites, hoping to sway the Toronto mine developer to pick northwestern Ontario for a $600-million to $800-million processing plant.

John Mason, the Thunder Bay Community Economic Development Commission's mining services project manager, said the tour gave Noront president Alan Coutts and chief development officer Steve Flewelling a better on-the-ground look at what land and infrastructure is available.

The tour took them to the former Grand Trunk Railway lands on the Fort William reserve and a mixture of private and government-owned parcels of waterfront brownfields in the Mission and McKellar Islands area.

"It was essentially a waterfront, or water-themed, tour," said Mason.

Thunder Bay-Fort William is one of four cities--along with Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury and Timmins--under consideration from Noront as a host site for a ferrochrome plant, which is years away from construction.

After the tour, Coutts and Flewelling presented their development plans before a crowd of 150 at the Valhalla Inn on July 20.

Noront has a string of nickel and chromite deposits in the James Bay lowlands, 600 kilo-metres north of Thunder Bay.

The mine development plan is set to begin construction on the Eagle's Nest nickel-copper deposit in 2019--that ore would be processed in Sudbury--before the development of its Black Bird chromite deposit takes place.

The high-grade chromite ore would be processed into ferrochrome which is a key ingredient used in stainless steel production. Noront's potential customer base is in northeastern U.S. where those finishing facilities exist.

However, those plans are likely years away from becoming reality with no Ring of Fire access road in place.

Mine development in the Far North is indefinitely stalled because of lengthy and ongoing negotiations between the Ontario government and the Matawa First Nations communities, and no route has been chosen.

"That was made quite clear," said Mason. "Al (Coutts) said that again at the end of his presentation. It's about the road."

In an interview with Northern Ontario Business a few months ago, Coutts said his company hoped to wrap up its pan-Northern site selection tour by late June and render a...