PolyMet plan for taconite plant unearths hope on the Range
Taconite long has been the only game in town on Minnesota's Iron Range. PolyMet Mining is looking to revive one of the old sites with an operation that instead would mine for copper, nickel and other metals.
Dee DePass, Star Tribune
Last update: November 05, 2006 – 4:22 PM
Hope on the range
Glen Stubbe , Star Tribune
A new day for mining -- and jobs
COMING TUESDAY
A $2 billion plan aims to bring an integrated iron-and-steel mill to the Iron Range for the first time.
PolyMet plan for taconite plant unearths hope on the Range
HOYT LAKES, MINN. - Streaks of daylight seeped into the dark, dusty ruin of the LTV taconite plant in Hoyt Lakes as a buoyant Jim Watson tossed debris into giant storage bins scattered around the floor.
The plant, which stretches for a quarter-mile, has been shuttered for five years, its 1,400 workers dismissed in the company's bankruptcy. Watson, an LTV millwright for nearly 30 years, and his wife, a 10-year LTV employee, were unceremoniously forced into retirement by the company's folding in 2001. For the 65-year-old Watson, the wound is still raw.
"We really took it in the shorts big-time when they took us [into bankruptcy]. I took a $700-a-month hit to my pension. The management should be in jail for what they did to us," he said.
But like the slivers of daylight darting into the dim building, Watson lately has been finding hope again. He was hired this fall by Vancouver, British Columbia-based PolyMet Mining Co., which bought the plant last year. Now his job is to help clean up the massive factory so it can reopen again.
"I can't wait till we get this operating again. I'm looking forward to seeing the contractors come in and start constructing. A lot of people are depending on it," said the scrappy Watson.
PolyMet paid a fire-sale $8.5 million for LTV's four buildings, taconite mines and 10,000 acres of land last November, said Warren Hudelson, PolyMet's executive vice president of development. This month, the company will buy the adjacent 6,000 acres that have railway access.
Instead of taconite, PolyMet's bold plan calls for reusing LTV's land and equipment to mine copper, nickel and platinum, a first for the Iron Range. By September 2007, PolyMet expects to have all its permits, so 1,000 construction workers can begin breaking ground for one new plant and retrofitting the main "concentrator" plant, where Watson spent decades earning a living.
"This [Hoyt Lakes plant] will be the first operating nickel plant in the U.S." and the first copper plant in Minnesota, Hudelson said. "It's a major milestone."
PolyMet will spend $380 million to reawaken 13 of LTV's 34 massive ore mills. By late 2008, the 14-foot-long mill vaults once again will be using what look like miniature cannon balls to crush metal-laden rock into powder.
Some 400 workers will run the factory and nearby mine, now dubbed the NorthMet Project.
"We are in a race to the starting line. That's my take on it," said PolyMet Operations Vice President Joe Scipioni while shining a spotlight on one of the still, Godzilla-size "crushers" brooding in the darkness.
"The permit to mine is expected [to be approved] by the third quarter of 2007. That's when we can start building the hydromet autoclave facility nearby. And we'll peak out at 1,000 construction workers who will rehab this building. One year later we will be set to go into operation mode."
Scipioni showed a visitor a cylindrical chunk of rock about the size of a roll of paper towels and the weight of a toddler -- the ore sample that the University of Minnesota helped the company analyze. The sample, left over from exploratory drilling done decades before near one of LTV's taconite pits, was devoid of iron, traditionally the prized metal on the Range. However, the sample was flecked with "low grade" precious and base metals such as copper, nickel, platinum, palladium and some minuscule bits of gold.
"We'll mine 32 tons of ore a day," Hudelson said. "These are low-grade deposits [containing] only 1 percent copper and less than 1 percent of nickel. You need to mine a lot of material and concentrate a lot of material. But that is what we know how to do in this part of the world -- move extremely large tonnage.
"We will produce 72 million pounds of copper annually in plates that are three feet by five, and 1/8-inch thick. And we'll produce 15 million pounds of nickel, 106,000 ounces of precious platinum, palladium and gold. We'll also produce three-quarters of a million pounds of cobalt in a dry hydroxide form that will be shipped ... to off-take refineries."
Recent technological improvements make feasible such a large extraction task, once considered impossible or cost-prohibitive, Scipioni said. By employing high-pressure autoclave technology from other industries, PolyMet expects to soon make a mint without the use of the traditional polluting smelters commonly found in copper plants.
The project is one of many big-money prospects slated for the Iron Range, a region recently devastated by the decline of its taconite plants that fed steel mills across the nation.
Now companies such as PolyMet, Minnesota Steel Industries and United Taconite are striving to resuscitate LTV, EVTAC Mine, Butler Taconite and other bankrupt operations with new technology, new workers and big cash infusions.
Tapping the roster
At PolyMet, officials plan to produce finished slabs of copper, plus a "high-value sludge" of precious platinum, palladium and gold. The sludge will be sold to an "off-take" refinery for further processing. The plant also will extract a second mixture of nickel and cobalt that also will be sold.
Ore mined just 8 miles east of PolyMet's NorthMet administration building in Hoyt Lakes will be taken by rail to one plant, dumped into the crusher, crunched into half-inch pebbles and sent on to the concentrator building. There, the pebbles will be smashed into powder and mixed with water and the metal and rock magnetically separated.
Copper is the only metal that will be fully processed on-site, using an advanced "pressure leeching autoclave" system that relies on pressure, water, high temperatures and agitators to extract metal from rock.
Hudelson smiled when he handed a visitor a shiny brown bar of metal.
"That's 99.7 percent pure copper," he said. "We can produce one pound of copper using half the energy than traditional smelting. There are no emissions. It's environmentally friendly and the most modern processing technology in the world."
The 400 permanent jobs associated with the project should in turn create another 500 jobs at local suppliers, stores and restaurants, said Iron Range Resources Commissioner Sandy Layman.
Some residents worry that it might be hard to find enough workers on the eastern end of the Range. Thousands of people have left the area during the past 10 years. The town of Hoyt Lakes, for example, has only one restaurant, and its singular identity probably explains why the name on the building says nothing more than "Restaurant."
Many of the miners who have stayed around through the bad times are approaching retirement age, Layman and mine operators admit.
But Hudelson's not worried.
"We have a roster of people interested in working for us," he said, adding that some Iron Range defectors will move back.
Inside the Hoyt Lakes restaurant, waitress Vicki Poupard stopped at Hudelson's table with her coffee pot in hand. She will apply as soon as PolyMet starts hiring, she said.
"It'll help a lot of businesses around here. A lot of businesses went way down when LTV closed," she said. "We're excited about it."
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