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PRINT EDITION
N.S. project focuses on titanium
Firm investing to see if metal can be mined
By KEVIN COX
Tuesday, December 4, 2001 – Page B8
MAITLAND, N.S. -- For millions of years the highest tides in the world have been depositing black titanium sand on the floor of the Shubenacadie River.
The recently formed Titanium Corp. Inc. is investing close to $9-million to determine whether it can overcome environmental and engineering hurdles posed by dredging in the roaring tides to extract the precious metal.
A pilot project is scheduled to start up in January. The test, to be done at a Nova Scotia university, will determine if it is commercially viable to separate the black minerals from a sample of 30 tonnes of river bed sand. If it is, the massive sand bars on the winding muddy river could be the site of one of the largest titanium production areas in the world, with a processing unit to be built at a cost of about $120-million.
The project is being watched closely by the Nova Scotia government, which is anxious for a mineral extraction project to dispel the gloom cast by the recent closing of Cape Breton's coal mines.
Titanium, a strong, lightweight metal, is now produced primarily in South Africa, the southern United States and Australia. The only Canadian titanium production unit is in Quebec. The metal is best known as a distance-boosting element in costly golf clubs. But it is also used in aircraft manufacturing and aerospace projects because it is resistant to heat and corrosion. Its widest use is in the form of titanium dioxide as a pigment in the paint, paper and plastic industries.
Two Nova Scotia prospectors looking for gold first reported finding titanium on the bed of the province's longest river in 1972, but there was no way of extracting it from the sands.
Provincial government geologists filed several reports about the black sands of the Shubenacadie, and in 1997 one of those studies caught the eye of geologist Jason Ross, who was looking through government archives on behalf of investors in another property. He decided to visit the site.
"The first thing I saw was the contrasting colours in the sand -- the black ripple marks," recalled Mr. Ross, now vice-president of Titanium Corp. "I started walking and I was absolutely astonished by the scope of the deposit."
He then took the unusual step of staking claim to the sands in a river that is best known as the site of wild water rafting excursions on the highest tides in the world. The investors then formed Titanium Corp., and took out 11 exploration licences covering 57.2 square kilometres in parts of the Shubenacadie River and Cobequid Bay.
Over the past three years, they have spent close to $6-million drilling holes and testing the mineral content of the sands. The company recently merged with NAR Resources Ltd. and completed a private placement to raise an additional $3-million.
George Elliott left a 35-year career as a Toronto corporate lawyer to take over the presidency of Titanium Corp. in 2000.
"All I knew about titanium then was that my artificial hip joint was made of it," he said.
Now he's wandering the sand bars of the Shubenacadie River with geologists -- examining the thickness of the black ripples and calculating how much of the metal may be there.
A technical evaluation done for the company placed the reserves of sand at 331 million tonnes, and calculated that about 1.94 per cent of that mass would be heavy metals.
The company plan calls for a dredging barge to scoop up 3,600 tonnes an hour of sand and send it through an extraction process that will sort out the valuable heavy metals and dump the light sand back on the river floor.
Some officials in the provincial Department of Natural Resources wonder how the barge can be moored to withstand the wild tides from Cobequid Bay in one of the few mining projects in the world to work in a tidal river.
But Mr. Elliott said working in the river sands can actually make the cost of extracting the metals lower than traditional pit or underground mining.
"If we spot a high-grade deposit we can just move the barge over there and work on it," he said. "In other areas they have to go through clay to get at the sand and go through a process called de-sliming to get at the sand. We don't have that problem. This is all sand."
Maintaining the equipment in a high-energy river is a challenge, but there are dredges available to do this kind of work, Mr. Ross said.
The project must also pass a provincial environmental assessment. So far, company officials have met with people living in the area and tried to assure them that the project won't affect local rafting or fishing activity.
There hasn't been an outcry against the activity. Titanium Corp. will also have to assure the province that carving channels out of the river bed won't damage fish migration and spawning activities.
"Mother Nature is going to level everything we do," Mr. Ross said. If the project passes environmental and technical muster, then Mr. Elliott will be faced with the daunting task of raising $120-million to get the dredging and processing equipment in place. |
