Cliffs to spend $3 billion in Ring of Fire

Cliffs Natural Resources announced their budget plans for 2012 and is looking to spend close to $3 billion to get its chromite project in the Ring of Fire into production, with $1.8 billion of that going to build a ferrochrome processing plant.
Cliffs said it will also spend $150 million to develop the Black Thor mine site, one of three sites it controls in the Ring of Fire, and $800 million to construct a near-mine concentrating plant.
Not included in those estimates is $600 million to build an all-weather road Cliffs said would benefit remote northern communities and other Ring of Fire mining projects. Because of that, Cliffs says it will be looking to private and government entities to share the cost of building the road.
Cliffs also said they have not made a decision about the location of the ferrochrome processing facility, according to Cliffs spokeswoman Patricia Persico.
Cliffs controls three large chromite deposits in northern Ontario’s Ring of Fire and has a timeline to begin production in 2015. Their initial prediction in 2009 called for production of an annual outcome of 600,000 tons of ferrochrome. But Cliffs also announced that after significant additional pre-feasibility work, Cliffs now anticipates annually producing 1 million tons of chromite in addition to the original 600,000 tons of ferrochrome.