Name and Location
Arctos anthracite project, British Columbia, (BC) Canada.

Client
Arctos Anthracite Joint Venture (AAJV), a collaboration between Fortune Minerals (80%) and POSCAN (20%), the Canadian subsidiary of Korea’s POSCO.

Project Description
The Arctos project consists of four resource areas referred to as the Lost Fox, Lost Fox Extension, Hobbit-Broatch and Summit deposits.

Run-of-mine and 10% ash product reserves for the Lost Fox deposit are estimated at 124.9-million tonnes and 69.2-million tonnes respectively.

Measured and indicated resources are estimated at 192.8-million tonnes, and inferred resources at 12.1-million tonnes.

Historical estimates of additional coal resources for the project include indicated resources of 38.1-million tonnes and inferred resources of 359.5-million tonnes within the Lost Fox Extension, Hobbit-Broatch and Summit deposit areas.

The updated 10% ash product coal reserves for the Lost Fox deposit area will support production of three-million tonnes a year over a minimum mine life of 25 years.

The deposit will use conventional openpit mining using 177 t class trucks, with 26 m³ hydraulic shovels for mine rock removal and 17 m³ backhoes to mine the coal from 10-m-high benches.

Coal from the Lost Fox deposit area will be processed at an on-site wash plant yet to be built, to produce a 10% ash, ultralow volatile pulverised coal injection product, which will be sold to the overseas steel industry.

The wash plant will use standard processing methods of heavy-media separation, cyclones and froth flotation, with a washability yield averaging 55.4% for the 14 coal seams that are economic in the initial openpit mine.

The plant will also be configured to produce other premium anthracite products in the future, including charge carbon for electric arc steel manufacturing, coke replacement and ferroalloys processing, carbon filters for water purification and sinter.

Electrical power supply for the process plant, camp and other facilities will be generated using diesel, with a capacity of 10.9 MW, consisting of eight 1 500 kW generators.

A camp will also be built to accommodate the workforce.

The anthracite will be transported by rail to the Ridley coal terminals at the Port of Prince Rupert for export to the overseas steel industry.

This will be accomplished by upgrading the existing Dease Lake Railway Line and a 150 km extension of this rail to the mine site along the railway right-of-way and roadbed that was substantially constructed by the BC government during the 1970s.

Value
Capital costs to achieve full production is C$788.6-million during the first three years of the project and includes the mine, process plant and all the required on-site and railway infrastructure.

Duration
Not stated.

Latest Developments
AAJV’s summer field programme has started in support of the environmental assessment (EA) to permit the mine, wash plant and railway extension.

The data collected will supplement environmental studies already completed by Fortune in previous years and contribute to the completion of the final EA report, which is expected to be filed in 2014 to initiate the review process.

The 2013 programme focuses additional environmental baseline studies for the proposed railway extension.

It also addresses gaps and updates the mine baseline data to support permitting and detailed engineering designs.

Fieldwork under way includes a drilling programme to support geochemical, hydrogeological and geotechnical studies, baseline data acquisition at the proposed mine location and the rail line, as well as archaeological studies.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
None stated.

On Budget and on Time?
Not stated.

Contact Details for Project Information
Fortune Minerals, tel +1 519 858 8188, fax +1 519 858 8155 or email info@fortuneminerals.com.
POSCAN, tel +1 604 688 9174.