I watched a TV program on National Geographic last night. It was about the world's largest bridges, needless to say they are in China and are amzing examples of construction. The most important fact from this program was that China is divided into two by the Yangtz River and in order for China to continue development and grow there are 30 such bridges planned to cross this river and will be built in the next 2 decades.

The most interesting bridge was an arch bridge which uses a great deal of steel, the Chinese have suceeded in building the largest bridge of this type ever. It is a huge sucessful acomplishment so expect more of this type of bridge to built in the future as especially now that they have the design perfected and have all the plans and construction jigs all figured out. This means future bridges will be cheaper to build and quicker.

The quality of the steel needed will be better than the bridges of old (which by the way will also soon need to be replaced) this steel will need lots of Ferrochrome and present world supplies will not be suffcient and come from old technology mines and smelters at great cost also some producing areas are politically unstable (S. Africa, is the largest producer of Chromite/Ferrochrome) and has a power shortage that cannot be relied on.

The Chromite deposits found so far by Freewest and Noront will increasingly become more important as they are added to and when prooved will be a lot cheaper to produce (there is no doubt that the infrastructure will be completed) in order to get the Chromite/Ferrochrome to market. The steel makers must be aware that they will be able to make a better steel available to build many of the new projects that will last far longer than bridges etc. of past construction.

At least one of the major supplers (Cliff) to the steel industry has it's sites on the developments at the ROF and the others will not be far behind.

Now if the "Good Old USA" finally wakes up and gets moving on infrastructure projects and Canada shakes off the "I'm a Lumberjack and I'm alright" label and we get some politicians with a bit of vision (remember the Avro!)to make Canada a great country by building a few new infrastructure projects to open up the transportation routes we need here. I've been here 42 years and we still do not have a high speed rail link from Detroit to Montreal Duh! I think we should oganize a trip to Europe (High Speed Rail)and China (The Mag Lev Train) for our Prime Minister and selected M.P's...Layton & Iggy included so they won't feel left out.

I leave you with this thought, as to the value of our investment in Chromite/Ferrochrome when someone fires the starting pistol!

tutank