Mining and Exploration

On May 8 Canada Fluorspar Inc (CFI) announced the third set of results from the diamond drilling program at its Director Vein on the company's St Lawrence project in Newfoundland, saying it is encouraged by the data that validates the trenching results from last year. 

It was during the 1990s that professionals from Antofagasta Minerals Group made the discovery of a new deposit in the Sierra Gorda mining zone. Though it was accepted from the off that developing such an asset, located at the heart of the driest desert in the world, would be a hugely challenging undertaking, the work of thousands of people has contributed to the transformation of a geological resources into a new mining company called Minera Esperanza.

The two companies first entered into a strategic alliance in August 2012 with the stated aim being to acquire such projects in Brazil.

Under the first stage of the MoUs, the alliance will spend some $4 million on exploration, with BC Iron noting that the expenditure for each following stage would be dependent on the success of the preceding work to delineate economic mineralisation.

Western Australia's Pilbara region is best known today as one of the world's biggest sources of iron ore and manganese – principally the former. These minerals are shipped out of Port Hedland to the hungry markets of north Asia and India, where demand for steel seems insatiable and likely to hold up for a good many years to come. In 2012, out of a total of 245 million tonnes of every kind of cargo that was exported through Hedland, 97 percent was accounted for by iron ore, 0.8 percent by manganese.

Since the early 1930s the mining industry has been the economic and social backbone of Zambia. In the decades since the country’s economy has been heavily reliant on the mining of copper and cobalt. Today the country is internationally recognised as a premier producer of these products, and is ranked as the world’s seventh largest producer of copper, generating 3.3 percent of the western world’s total production.

Originally known as The Associated Manganese Mines of South Africa Limited, Assmang as it exists today bears very little resemblance to the fledgling company that started work on the Northern Cape’s manganese fields in 1935. Today, the three operating divisions benefit from the modern mining infrastructure and technologies, while Assmang’s “we do it better” philosophy has helped to ensure low operating costs and high employee buy-in.

Under the $650 million deal, which also includes the copper mine’s associated San Manuel Arizona Railroad Company (SMARRCO), Capstone will assume the business's environmental liabilities, and BHP Billiton employees working at Pinto Valley and SMARRCO will become employees of Capstone.

BHP has been looking to restructure its business and offload non-core assets, amid a decline in global demand and falling commodity prices. The mining group has said that it wants to focus on core businesses such as iron ore and coal.

From the first aboriginal inhabitants to use various minerals to produce tools to the now 363,000 plus people who earn a living from the more than 800 mines that exist across the country, Canada’s history has always been intrinsically linked to mining.

In 2012, MAXAM celebrated its 140th birthday. Founded by Alfred Nobel in 1872, the group today stands recognised as being one of the leading service and industrial organisations operating on a global scale, with a yearly turnover of approximately one billion euros.

Specialising in the development, manufacture and commercialisation of civil explosives and initiation systems for mining, MAXAM boasts a presence in all of the world’s major and developing mining areas.

While Macrotek has been marketing pollution control systems to every conceivable industry for more than 80 years – after all it’s hard to name a field of human activity that does not generate emissions – in recent years it has tended to focus on the mining industry. Indeed it has developed a relationship with that industry that could be described as symbiotic. Located in Toronto the company finds itself at the centre of a global technological and financial hub that has made it the city of choice for mining majors and juniors alike.