The head of a mining company looking to open up in the Ring of Fire says every direct mining job creates up to four indirect jobs.
That would mean 2,000 jobs just from one of Noront’s two proposed projects alone chief operating officer Paul Semple said.
The company is just wrapping up its feasibility study on its Eagle’s Nest nickel deposit, believed to be the second largest undeveloped deposit in the world, in the Ring of Fire.
It’s projected the mine will employ 400 people during its first 11-years of operation and 1,000 during its $750 million construction phase.
And given that Noront has only explored 10 square kilometers of its 1,100 square kilometer exploration claim, that’s only the beginning Semple said.
“We’re just at the tip of the iceberg here as far as mining potential,” Semple said in Thunder Bay Friday.
Like other companies hoping to tap into the ring of fire’s potential, Semple said the biggest obstacle is infrastructure.
The provincial and federal governments need to take a leadership role in getting roads and transmission lines to the ring of fire Semple said.
Noront wants to see a public-private partnership to get that infrastructure going but its ultimately up to government to make it happen.
“We don’t see that we should be owners of roads and power lines,” he said. “But we’ll be customers and we’ll pay our share.”
While some companies have suggested a north-south rail corridor through Nakina to the ring of fire, Noront wants an east-west route through Pickle Lake. That route would not only help the ring of fire but also the Northern communities around it Semple said.
“That’s one of the main drivers for our selection of the route,” he said.
The nickel would most likely be shipped to Sudbury because of that city’s existing capacity.
But the city processing Noront’s other big claim, chromite, is still being decided, Semple said.
The company is still in its first phase with its chromite project, but Semple said Thunder Bay would be one of the cities in the running for its processor. He added, however, that it's just too early to say where exactly such a facility might go.
