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Industry - Business
Overview:
“With
the assistance of international consultants
in the iron and steel sectors, our
Management Team spent considerable time
evaluating the current and future iron and
steel markets, the changing patterns of
supply, demand, and international trade for
iron ore and steel resulting in greater
understanding of the iron market and the
present and forecast prices for various iron
ore products.
Based on our current market assessment,
Bending Lake will be concentrating on the
production of pellets. As the process for
making pellets is more straightforward,
permitting is more streamlined and better
understood, and the process has less
variables (no coal is required, and the
operational process is more mature), the
Company is initially planning to produce
pellets, targeting production for 2016-17.
Our strategy is for the Company to produce 4
million tonnes of pellets annually, at a
production cost of about US$50 per tonne.
Future plans to produce merchant pig iron
are still in the works. The process is
promising and once proven commercially
viable, it may be an ideal vehicle for iron
ore mining companies and others to convert
iron ore to value added nuggets. However,
much will depend on the results of the
commercial plant under installation in
Minnesota and adaptability of the technology
to our raw material.
Based on the current studies and ongoing
engineering and permitting evaluations, the
mine, concentrating plant and pelletizing
plant will be located at sites near the
Bending Lake deposit and close to utility,
railroad and highway infrastructure
connections.
BLIG is preparing to initiate it’s
comprehensive Environmental Assessment (EA)
of the proposed project. The Management Team
is organizing documents and studies to allow
federal agencies to "scope" the project and
direct the conduct of the EA. In order to
satisfy provincial EA requirements, a Terms
of Reference (ToR) document for an
Individual EA is being has been prepared
concurrently with the federal Project
Description for CEAA.
BLIG is
currently fulfilling its provincial and
federal obligations separately; with a
potential to combine the federal and
provincial reports into one document. At
this time, it is BLIG’s expectation that
joint federal/provincial “Guidelines for the
Preparation of an Environmental Impact
Statement Pursuant to the Ontario EA Act and
the Canadian EA Act (CEAA) will be the
outcome of this process. We also anticipate
coordination of public consultation
activities where possible”. |
