Sounds like nice grade. I don't know about how you upgrade it, or what the true value is at the end of the day. And whether it is very much in demand at present. They used to mine a lot of phosphate rock in Ontario until the big agri biz open pits in Florida took over. It was in the form of apatite which is calcium phosphate. (Your teeth are calcium phosphate, BTW) When you add sulfuric to it, it becomes super phosphate, which is a good fertilizer. Texas Gulf has big plans to get into the super phosphate business as they had big beds of sedimentary phosphate rock in the States. They are going to ship the phosphate into Canada then make super phosphate from the Texas Gulf pyrite which they would roast and catalyze into sulfuric. What keyboshed that plan was the ONR who wanted 25 cents a super phosphate rock ton to ship the stuff out of Timmins. They thought 5 cents a ton was a good price to ship the phosphate rock in, but 25 cents out. Basically the government subsidized ONR wanted TG's profits. It was theft of this kind, CDN style that finally convinced TG to sell the largest richest copper zinc mine in the world. That also ended the dream of Northern Ontario becoming the fertilizer kings of North America. We basically did the same thing to a group of US investors when we nationalized the Potash mines in Saskatchewan with the New Democratic Communist Cabal. They substituted a P for "Communist Cabal". Generally a P is the same thing. It took a long time before the US investor wanted apiece of a CDN project. We haven't the money generally or the markets to develop them ourselves, but we will be damned if the Yankees are getting any! What happened with the Phosphate rock debacle is Sherritt Gordon got into the biz instead with its nitrates in AB, and started shipping fertilizer out of Manitoba, as the government there was more sane and would not jack rates in and out of Thompson where they produced all their nickel ore. Sherritt Inc. its fertilizer arm was bought out by Agrium in the mid 90's.
It is hard to say. The Cargill deposit which is an OP, runs about 60 million tons 20% Phosphate. There are deposits in the States that run 8 billion tons of 30% recoverable phosphate. (Aurora - North Carolina) The Florida stuff is vast and runs from 29% to 36%.
A phosphate concentrate runs about 36%.
There are all kinds of upgrading processes, including elutriation, Oleic acid flotation, amine reverse flotation etc. Concentrates may run from 20 to 28% in some deposits in Canada.
In general the BC deposits have been considered uncompetitive with the US stuff. Unless I had a good new concentrating process I would not touch underground stuff of any grade. Of course the prices are high today.
agrium.com
Right now 38% phosphate concentrate sold for 200 dollars per tonne in February but I don't know the price today. Everything has changed. Average price in 2008 was $113 a ton at the mine gate. It still might be over $125. The trick is knowing where it is going to be and whether you can get contracts for it.
Compare costs etc to this. Note these are MAP and SPA costs and prices not phosphate rock which is the mine product.
biz.yahoo.com
Doesn't sound like that will support an underground mine for sure.
This is what I like: 5 gram gold dirt.
reuters.com |
