Boatnerd Discussion Forum

As others have said, don't hold your breath that this project will ever happen. Environmental groups and others will fight it tooth-and-nail.

And with even more mini-mill capacity coming into service in the next couple of years in the US, expect an over-capacity in the US steel industry, which will impact the integrated producers and continue the decades long reduction of blast furnaces in the US.

- Brian

Lithium mines are probably one of the most environmentally unsound operations on earth. Rare earths, cobalt, and valuable metals are just too dirty and inefficient to make here. I think that the end is in sight with coal and iron ore cargoes here along with the ships that carry them.

Just wait for the environmental reviews & incurred delays to sink the whole project.

One thing I didn't consider however is perhaps the chemical processing plant needs large amounts of incoming product. Like limestone or salt or coke or something similar. That could change the dynamics if there is a large volume of incoming material.

Not sure why they are discussing a port. Unless I read something wrong, their feasibility study proposes a mill with an output of 80,000 tonnes of concentrate per year (335 working days). That's about 240 tonnes per day or just over 2 rail cars per day of concentrate to transport.

Granted, they have 4 locations they are looking at. But if each is similar in size and all are developed at once, that still only 8 rail car loads per day of concentrate. Seems more likely it would be exported by container in bulk bags or by bulk through an ocean port given those volumes.

[url=https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/industry-news/mining/sudbury-lithium-company-talks-of-great-lakes-port-side-processing-plant-3439359]Sudbury lithium company talks of Great Lakes port-side processing plant[/url]

An emerging lithium producer is considering a chemical processing plant at a "Great Lakes port" as part of a US$685-million plan to bring an open-pit mine project into production in northwestern Ontario.

Frontier Lithium, a Sudbury company with two high-quality lithium deposits north of Red Lake, released a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) on Feb. 16 of its PAK Lithium Project, estimating a 26-year mine life.

The company didn't name a port for the plant, nor provide any criteria for selecting a processing site.

The closest Seaway draft port to the PAK project would be Thunder Bay, where city officials there are already working with two other lithium exploration companies to find a suitable brownfield site to establish a proposed lithium processing facility.