Cliffs endorses Ring of Fire railroad plan

Rails to the Ring

With a $2 billion pricetag for a proposed Ring of Fire railroad, KWG Resources is searching for innovative ways to finance it.

Building a Ring of Fire railroad to move millions of bulk tonnes of chromite is a certainty, said a senior official with Cliffs Natural Resources.

Bill Boor, Cliffs' senior vice-president of global ferroalloys, who is overseeing the Ohio miner's project development in the James Bay lowlands, said rail is an inevitability as more mines come onstream in the remote district.

In last winter's base case for its high grade Black Thor chromite deposit, Cliffs proposed a permanent year-round haul road between the mine site and railway connections near Nakina in northwestern Ontario.

But Boor clarified that one mine alone doesn't support the investment of a railroad.

However, establishing a transportation corridor will improve the economics of other nearby deposits. Once that “scale” is built up, Boor said, “the right answer is to put a railroad in place.

“We just see it as a phased development.”

http://www.northernontariobusiness.com/Industry-News/mining/Cliffs-endorses-Ring-of-Fire-railroad-plan.aspx