There is a huge amount of news in the iron ore space in the latest issue of International Mining Project News. Prefeasibility news comes from Zenith Minerals (Mount Alexander), Mindax’s Mt Forrest, and two Aquila Resources projects (Hardey in Australia and Meletse in South Africa). Bellzone Mining’s Kalia in Guinea is at the feasibility stage as are Cazaly’s Parker Range and Ferrum Crescent’s Moonlight, and there is concrete development news from Tara Minerals’ Tania iron ore property in Mexico and the FerrAus Pilbara Project in Western Australia. Northland Resources announced a positive update to the DFS on its 100%-owned Kaunisvaara project and in the same country, Dannemora is making progress re-opening its mine in east central Sweden. Prior to closing in 1992, the mine had been in operation since the 15th Century. Atlas Iron is expanding Iron Mining Group, a diversified global iron ore company, has launched its iron ore trading subsidiary under the name, IMG Iron Ore Trading. Then there is Sundance Resources and Legend Mining for access co-operation with regards to usage of rail and port infrastructure as part of the Mbalam project.On May 13: BHP Billiton released the final Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the expansion of its Olympic Dam operation in South Australia. Recent years annual copper production has averaged about 180,000 t, with 4,000 t of uranium oxide, 80,000 oz of gold and 800,000 oz of silver. The proposed expansion is centred on the creation of a new open pit mine that would initially operate simultaneously with the existing underground mine and lift ore production six-fold.
On consecutive days, May 12 and 13, Aquila Resources announced positive results from the prefeasibility study (PFS) of the development of the Hardey iron ore deposit in Western Australia and then its Meletse iron ore deposit, part of the Thabazimbi Iron Ore Project in South Africa.
Quadra FNX Mining is forming a JV with Sumitomo Metal Mining to develop the worldclass Sierra Gorda copper–molybdenum project in Chile. Production from current sulphide reserves will average: 483 Mlb/y of copper, 25 Mlb/y of molybdenum and 64,000 oz/y of gold over a 20 year mine life.
Vale has opened its first nickel operation in Brazil. Onça Puma, in Ourilândia do Norte, southeast Pará. It is one of the largest ferronickel production plants in the world. The project, which covers the municipalities of Ourilândia do Norte, Tucumã and Parauapebas, has an annual production capacity of 220,000 t of ferronickel, containing 53,000 t of nickel.
Lynas Corp has started feeding ore into the Mount Weld concentration plant occurred. This is a significant milestone. Lynas owns the richest known deposit of RREs (Lanthanides), in the world at Mount Weld, near Laverton in Western Australia.
Glencore has confirmed the price of its bumper $11 billion market debut at £5.30, in the middle of its initial range, a level it hopes will secure a strong performance on debut. At that price the world’s largest diversified commodities trader and owner of many mining interests will be worth £36.7 billion pounds ($59.31 billion). “Glencore’s offer has seen substantial interest from investors around the world and was significantly oversubscribed throughout the price range providing Glencore with a high quality, diverse and geographically spread investor base,” Glencore’s Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg said. With a 10% over allotment option likely to take the total size of Glencore’s offering to $11 billion, it is set to be London’s largest-ever listing, overtaking Russia’s Rosneft, which raised $10.6 billion in 2006.
All this and much, much more in the May 6 issue of International Mining Project News….
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