THUNDER BAY — Officials in four northern Ontario centres including Thunder Bay are still waiting to hear Noront Resources' decision on where it proposes to set up a ferrochrome processor.
Thunder Bay, Sudbury, Timmins and Sault Ste. Marie all submitted bids to host the smelter for chromite mined in the Ring of Fire.
At the beginning of February, Noront said it had hired Hatch, a Mississauga-based engineering and consulting company, to help evaluate the bids.
In the same announcement, the company estimated that "the adjudication process will conclude in three to four months," and said "a decision will be publicly announced at that time along with the criteria and rationale for site selection."
Thunder Bay submitted a joint bid with Fort William First Nation, with city officials touting the potential for the processor to create as many as 500 direct jobs.
Chromite would be trucked to the facility from the Aroland and Nakina area.
Thunder Bay City Manager Norm Gale said Wednesday that the city has "no information that the public or media doesn't have" regarding the status of Noront's decision on the smelter location.
Gale told Tbnewswatch that city officials "continue to work with Noront as they make their decision, and are supporting their work in every way we can."
Noront CEO Alan Coutts could not be reached for comment, but a spokesperson for the company said the decision is taking longer than expected. She said it should be announced soon, but may come as late as July.
The spokesperson said the recent provincial election was not a factor in the timing of the announcement.
In March, PC leader Doug Ford told northern Ontario journalists that if he were elected, he would take action to develop the Ring of Fire.
"There's billions of dollars of chromite up there that needs to be mined. We just have to get there. If I have to hop on that bulldozer myself...we're going to start building the roads to get mining," Ford said.
He will officially take over as Premier of Ontario on June 29.
At a recent mining event in Timmins, Coutts was quoted as saying the best situation for a smelter will allow for the repurposing of infrastructure that is already in place.
In 2012, former Ring of Fire stakeholder Cliffs Natural Resources nominated Sudbury as the site for a smelter but the American mining company subsequently pulled out of the development.
