About the Company

With the assistance of international consultants in the iron and steel sectors, our Management Team spent considerable time evaluating the current and future iron and steel markets, the changing patterns of supply, demand, and international trade for iron ore and steel resulting in greater understanding of the iron market and the present and forecast prices for various iron ore products.

 

Based on our current market assessment, Bending Lake will be concentrating on the production of pellets. As the process for making pellets is more straightforward, permitting is more streamlined and better understood, and the process has less variables (no coal is required, and the operational process is more mature), the Company is initially planning to produce pellets, targeting production for 2016-17.

 

Our strategy is for the Company to produce 4 million tonnes of pellets annually,  at a production cost of about US$50 per tonne.

 

Future plans to produce merchant pig iron are still in the works.  The process is promising and once proven commercially viable, it may be an ideal vehicle for iron ore mining companies and others to convert iron ore to value added nuggets.  However, much will depend on the results of the commercial plant under installation in Minnesota and adaptability of the technology to our raw material.

 

Based on the current studies and ongoing engineering and permitting evaluations, the mine, concentrating plant and pelletizing plant will be located at sites near the Bending Lake deposit and close to utility, railroad and highway infrastructure connections.

 

BLIG is preparing to initiate it’s comprehensive Environmental Assessment (EA) of the proposed project. The Management Team is organizing documents and studies to allow federal agencies to "scope" the project and direct the conduct of the EA.  In order to satisfy provincial EA requirements, a Terms of Reference (ToR) document for an Individual EA is being has been prepared concurrently with the federal Project Description for CEAA.

 

BLIG is currently fulfilling its provincial and federal obligations separately; with a potential to combine the federal and provincial reports into one document.   At this time, it is BLIG’s expectation that joint federal/provincial “Guidelines for the Preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement Pursuant to the Ontario EA Act and the Canadian EA Act (CEAA) will be the outcome of this process. We also anticipate coordination of public consultation activities where possible.