I have been gathering some information on infrastructure and BoatBoy inspired me to share it when he commented on rail. It seems that these ferrochrome furnaces are sized to produce about 100,000 tonnes of ferrochrome per year and they each need about 55megawatts of power. Four of them will produce 400,000 tonnes. This will require 800,000t of concentrate/pellets and 1,000,000t of ore. This is a nice round number to consider and it does represent 5% of global production (in good times)

The power is a challenge from an infrastructure perspective. Four furnaces require 220 MW, the pellet plant needs approx 3 MW and misc 2MW so the site will need approx. 225MW transmission which is a lot of juice and a fair size transmission line. However, there is a lot of hydropower in James Bay and we have to look after our own. There was a post the other day that had a report on four possible major transmission lines that didn't get any comment but it may auger well for developement of this area depending on the route chosen. The power consumption cost will be about $30 million per 100,000t for a total annual power cost of $120 million. These furnaces also need lots of water,which we have in abundance but South Africa doesn't. 200megaliters per day per furnace. For our analysis that means 800Ml per day, which is enough to supply a mid size city. Please feel free to critique these numbers.

Transporting the material produced is also a challenge. If we shipped lumpy ore at 1 million tons per year in 50t B-train trucks, we would have to haul 55 truckloads per day. If we shipped 800,000t of pellets, we would haul 44 truckloads per day. If we produced 400,000t of ferrochrome, it would be 22 truckloads per day. In my opinion, none of these numbers support building a railway, there is just not enough traffic. This would change though if we were producing more, if there was a nickel mine etc. but there would have to be a huge amount of freight to justify rail.

These are the major infrastructure issues that a major has to evaluate. Do we produce pellets for sale and not go through the power transmission line cost? Is providing a large power line that more expensive than a smaller one, because you still need power on site. Is that amount of power available and at what cost? Will cutting your transportation cost in half tip the scales towards producing ferrochrome rather than just pellets?

And here is the real kicker, last year when markets were hot, ferrochrome sold at over $2.00 per pound. 400,000t at $1.50 per pound is $1.32 billion dollars!!! Annually!!! That can pay for a hell of a lot of capitol and the juice to run it.

Feel free to modify/correct/improve these numbers. It's an approximate analysis and there are many other operating and infrastructure matters to consider.

Mike