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BacTech talking to partners for Cobalt tailings project
By: Liezel Hill
Published: 31st August 2009
TORONTO (miningweekly.com) -- Canadian junior BacTech Mining, which
hopes to use its bioleaching technology to neutralise the arsenic
content and recover cobalt, silver and nickel from as much as
18-million tons of tailings left behind in Cobalt, Ontario, is now in
advanced talks with potential partners for the project, CEO Ross Orr
reports.
The firm, which plans to build an initial 200 000 t/y tailings
demonstration plant next year, is essentially looking for a 'big
brother' with full pockets and operational experience that would,
ideally, come in with a 50% interest in the project, he said in an
interview.
BacTech's tank bioleaching process was developed in Australia in the
1980s and 1990s, and has since been used successfully to extract gold
from difficult ores in commercial plants in Australia and China.
However, Orr has now set his sights on Cobalt, a historic Ontario
mining camp where high-grade silver was first discovered in 1903, and
which produced more than 330-million ounces of silver over the
following 20 years, from about 100 mines.
Of course, that many mines means a great deal of tailings deposits
dotted across the area -- Orr says current estimates put the total at
around 18-million tons.
The high grades meant that Cobalt miners didn't bother with
difficult-to-recover silver, while the cobalt in the ore -- which at
the time was viewed as virtually worthless -- was disposed of with the
silver tailings.
Fast forward to 2009 and, with both metals trading at very healthy
levels, the Cobalt tailings would be in high demand, were it not for
the not-so-insignificant issue of arsenic contained in the rock.
By now, the arsenic displaced by mining in the early 1900s has become a
significant health issue in the area, to the extent that people are
advised against swimming in or eating fish caught in certain lakes.
Fortunately, neutralising, or stabilising arsenic is something that
BacTech's Bacox technology does particularly well.
To prove the process, and start generating cash flow at the same time,
the company plans to build an initial 200 000 t/y tailings plant.
Applications for government grants have produced encouraging responses,
and Orr hopes he could secure as much as C$16-million of a total
C$25-million project cost from public sources.
The balance will be put up by BacTech and its future partner.
Preparations for the project are already well under way - water studies
began earlier this year and consultants have been hired to complete
environmental and closure plans.
Testing has also been carried out on sample tailings from Gold Bullion
Development's Castle mine, which will feed the demonstration plant
during its initial phase.
"It's very lucrative... there's a lot of metal in there and cobalt
prices are rising nicely," Orr said.
If all goes to plan, detailed engineering work on the plant should be
under way in the fourth quarter of this year, to allow for construction
to begin in August 2010.
The first tailings from Castle would then be processed early in 2011,
Orr said.
The plant would run for between six and eight months, before a decision
would be made on expanding to the planned 1-million tons a year, which
should produce about 70 000 t of concentrate.
The expansion to 1-million tons should be relatively straightforward,
given the modular nature of the technology, and the fact that the
demonstration plant will serve the dual purpose of proving the
technology and producing revenue means that the expansion should be
easily financed with debt.
The company has support from both the federal and provincial MPs for
the area, as well as the local mayors.
"We held a public meeting in April and the response was quite clearly:
'the place is polluted, we have no jobs here, why would we not want you
here?'," Orr said.
He also comments that the timing of the project couldn't be better,
with the price of cobalt firming up nicely and with the hype around
lithium-ion batteries for hybrid vehicles.
However, not satisfied with the prospect of 18-million tons of tailings
to treat, Orr is already looking around at the next big opportunity to
put the firm's technology to good use.
An obvious candidate would be the Faro mine complex, in the Yukon
territory, while the company also recently signed a deal with a Swedish
company to look at the potential of using bioleaching technology on
black oil shales.
"And if you take the idea of reclamation a step further, well, consider
that the world is heading towards benign tailings," Orr said.
"So why wouldn't you put a bioleach plant at the back end of a
producing mine?
"We could get paid in metal and whatever we needed to turn a decent
rate of return, and the mining company is going to save millions of
dollars down the road," he enthused.
GOLD SPLIT
Of course, marketing yourself as a clean-technology play can get a
little sticky when your biggest successes so far have been in the
gold-mining industry.
"I found myself talking to cleantech funds and they see the words 'gold
mining' and tell me: 'I'll get roasted if I put money into a company
involved in that'," Orr recounts.
The solution he came up with is simple enough: "I said, fine, we'll
just make a new company."
The firm is now looking seriously at two gold-mine projects -- one in
Canada and an advanced development project in Eastern Europe, where a
new 'BacTech Gold' would take a non-controlling equity interest.
Current shareholders in BacTech will receive a proportionate level of
shares in the new company, which will have an entirely new management
team and will be run as a mining company that licences the bioleaching
technology from BacTech.
BacTech would likely put some initial working capital into the new
firm, and the company could also look at an equity placement to raise
funds ahead of a public listing.
"The only connection between two companies would be royalty paid back
to BacTech for the use of our technology - and we'd give them the
exclusive right to the gold technology for a royalty," Orr said.
"And then we would go back to our knitting on the cobalt side."
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