Three developments in the niche niobium-mining industry could significantly boost world supplies of the metal in coming years.
In Canada, equal partners
Niobec is the only primary niobium mine in North America and ranks as the world’s third-largest producer. Opened in 1976, it first produced niobium pentoxide (Nb2O5) and then began producing higher-value ferro-niobium in 1995 following the installation of a ferro-niobium conversion plant. In the Niobec partnership, Teck serves as mine operator while Cambior oversees marketing.
Teck Project Manager George Thornton says the feasibility study, expected to be completed during the third quarter, is eyeing a 20-to-50% expansion of the mill’s grinding and flotation circuit.
“Back in 1994, we had about an 18% share of the niobium market, and now we’re at about 11%,” says Thornton. “We’re producing the same amount [about 4.8 million lbs. of contained niobium annually]; it’s just that the market has grown. We want to get our market share closer to where we were before.”
If the feasibility study is positive, the partners say, construction could begin as early as the fourth quarter.
Currently, mining is carried out by means of open-stoping at a daily rate of 2,250 tonnes, but only on a 5-day-per-week schedule.
“We can expand production there quite simply,” says Thornton. “And at the tail end, the ferro-niobium conversion plant runs only five days a week on day shift, so there’s lots of spare operating time there as well.”
In 1998, the partners deepened Niobec’s shaft to 550 from 404 metres, developed a ramp and installed a new crusher. The work, part of a $15.7-million capital program, is permitting development of what is called the lower or third block, where proven and probable reserves stand at 7 million tonnes grading 0.73% Nb2O5. Niobec will put this block into production during the third quarter of 1999.
Overall, reserves at the Niobec deposit are estimated at 10.6 million tonnes grading 0.52% Nb2O5, enough to maintain the current operating rate until the mid-2010s. The deposit remains open at depth.
Niobec’s ferro-niobium production is marketed in Europe, Japan and North America for use as an alloying agent in high-strength and corrosion-resistant specialty steel products.
In a second Canadian niobium development, Montreal-based junior
Niocan closed a $2.5-million private placement at 50 cents per share with several institutions and investors, including Norshield Financial Group, provincially owned Soquem and Palos Capital. As well, Quebec’s Ministry of Natural Resources contributed $427,000 and Hydro-Quebec gave Niocan $50,000 for market research.
These funds will be used for: an environmental-impact study and permitting; marketing and sales agreements; basic engineering; process optimization work at the Centre de Recherches Minerales in Quebec City; and the purchase of surface rights.
Niocan says these activities will be completed within a year in preparation for a senior financing and a production decision.
“We have met a lot of companies in Toronto and Montreal and they all like our project,” says Niocan Chairman Rene Dufour. “We feel it will be easier to get the senior financing than it was to get the risk financing in the past.”
Dufour has relinquished his post as Niocan president and been replaced by Richard Faucher, who briefly served as chairman of KWG Resources when that company sought protection from its creditors in 1997. Niocan is also bringing on board three new members: Faucher, Hubert Marleau (of Marleau Lemire Securities and a former director of St. Genevieve Resources) and Richard Neal.
Since 1995, Niocan has spent $3 million developing its wholly owned niobium property, where reserves stand at 13.3 million tonnes grading 0.63% Nb2O5 within two zones exploitable by underground methods.
In a third niobium development, London-listed Reunion Mining has been advancing a 42%-owned niobium project named Mabounie in Gabon in equatorial Africa.
Situated 200 km southeast of the capital, Libreville, the deposit was discovered in 1986 by the Gabonese Directorate of Mines by means of an aerial geophysical survey and then explored by the French government-owned Bureau de recherches geologiques et minieres.
Exploration was originally focussed on a large phosphate resource, but attention later shifted to the deposit’s niobium potential. This niobium-enriched portion of the carbonatite was recently drilled on a 100-by-100-metre grid.
The Mabounie carbonatite deposit has been estimated to contain 360 million tonnes of material grading 1.02% Nb205 and 24% P205. A higher-grade resource of near-surface enrichment was pegged at 41.2 million tonnes of 1.9% Nb205 and has become the main focus of a pilot program and an ongoing feasibility study.
In April, Reunion announced that a study of Mabounie’s ore types showed that niobium recoveries from certain ore types were “significantly less than expected.”
In light of this news, resources were revised to 14 million tonnes grading 1.7% Nb2O5. However, Reunion says only a small portion of the deposit has been evaluated and that the size of the resource base “is not a concern.”
A mini-pilot plant designed to confirm the likely overall recovery of the niobium will start up shortly, and, provided this is successful, a representative 200-tonne bulk sample will be taken in mid-1999 so that full-scale piloting can be completed before year-end.
Reunion envisages constructing a plant that will be capable of producing up to 6,000 tonnes of ferro-niobium annually. Capital costs would be roughly US$50 million.
With niobium mineralization occuring at shallow depths in soft material, Reunion expects the stripping ratio will be less than 0.5-to-1 and that mining costs will be “extremely low.”
Ownership of the operation is to be divided among four groups: Reunion would hold a 60% share of Niobium Resources, in which Austrian noble-alloy producer Treibacher Industrie and a private Dutch company would each have a 20% interest. Niobium Resources, in turn, would have a 70% interest in a Gabonese company, Societe Miniere de la Mabounie (SOMIMA), which would hold the mineral rights over the deposit. The balance of SOMIMA would be held by a group of Gabonese private investors.
The Mabounie project has an uncertain future, owing to
Looming over the niobium market are the two dominant Brazilian producers, CBMM and Catalao, which have open-pit operations that, combined, produce more than 85% of the world’s niobium supply.
CBMM’s huge Araxa niobium deposit alone has supplied 60% of the world’s niobium requirements over the past 22 years.
CBMM is owned 45% by Molycorp, a wholly owned subsidiary of U.S. conglomerate
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