Timmins is in the top two for the Noront Ferrochrome site.
Noront Resources is a Toronto based company and the largest developer in the Ring of Fire. The company is looking for a location for a ferrochrome smelter site where chromite ore will be processed into ferrochrome and sold to stainless steal makers.
Timmins has been fighting against three other cities, and now it’s down to two. Timmins is up against Sault St. Marie.
Noront CEO Alan Coutts says each application has been compelling and beneficial in their own ways. Coutts says the company is now moving onto the next step of the process which includes negotiations of the commercial use terms for both the contending sites. He says this stage is expected to wrap up by the end of its fourth quarter.
After the site is picked, it will have to go through a long permitting process. Coutts says optimistically, the ore would be arriving from the Ring of Fire in seven years. He adds that once it’s up and running, there is enough ore to operate for more than 100 years.
This will be the first processing facility of its kind in North America. The last permitted smelter in Ontario was the Kidd metallurgical site in the lat 70’s.