Shipping infrastructure in Nuuk is far more developed than in, say, the Canadian Arctic, with a full port that sees ships call daily. Although that might sound remote, western Greenland actually enjoys a relatively mild climate and well-developed shipping infrastructure.įagan said temperatures rarely drop below -20 C, although an unusually cold winter last year slowed construction somewhat. The sawed blocks will then be broken into smaller pieces with a rock breaker before being sent to the primary crusher.Īappaluttoq is located 20 kilometres from the tiny fishing village of Qeqertarsuatsiaat (population 240), which is itself 150 kilometres from Greenland’s capital, Nuuk. Waste rock at the open pit will be blasted, ore will be drilled and the drill holes connected with a production wire saw, common to the dimension stone industry. The gem-bearing corundum grades are projected to average 292 grams per tonne over the life of the mine. Once mining is underway, production will ramp up, starting at 2,849 tonnes of ore in the construction-shortened first year, and topping out at more than 31,000 tonnes in the ninth and final year. Pre-stripping work in the pit is scheduled to begin this fall. The processing plant equipment has all been procured and is awaiting the completion of the processing plant building. The processing plant area is blasted, concrete for the workshop floor is poured and rebar for the site is being assembled. The pit site is on a peninsula jutting into a nearby lake, and TNG plans to lower the water level by 10 metres, allowing them to build a road connecting the pit to the processing plant, a job that Fagan said is around 50 per cent complete. Fagan estimated camp construction is 80 per cent complete. So far, construction of the main roads connecting the local port to the camp and processing plant site is finished. LNS Group’s subsidiary LNS Greenland is doing the construction and mining for the project. “They significantly cut our CAPEX by doing that arrangement,” Fagan said. The deal with LNS Group offered True North $6 million in cash for a 27 per cent stake in the project, and an additional $5 million worth of construction work that will up LNS’ stake in Aappaluttoq. The Norwegian mining and construction firm operates at producing mines in Scandinavia. It found a unique way to tackle both those issues at once when, last October, the company closed an $11-million financing deal with LNS Group of Norway. Mark Fedikow of North American Nickel describes the "tremendous advantage" of exploring in Greenlandįor now, True North is focused on construction and financing. “But we are excited given market indicators,” she added. Until Aappaluttoq begins producing stones later this fall, True North will not know the exact value of the gems, said Henning. We’ll work it out according to the market and depending on the quality of the material.” “There is no manual, and because the Greenland material is new, there’s nothing to base a pricing structure on. “Coloured gemstone pricing is an extremely difficult thing to do,” said Hayley Henning, the company’s vice-president of marketing and development. “Diamonds have a long-established history of published prices and a defined grading system – this is not the case for rubies and sapphires yet.” “There is no spot price for rubies, which makes a feasibility study a difficult thing to do,” he explained. The difficulty in pricing ruby means a compliant feasibility study is not possible. The 2015 study includes a much more comprehensive pit design, mine schedule and processing flowsheet, opts for dense media separation and optical sorting rather than jigs, and nails down the tax and royalty numbers for the project. “The last pre-feasibility study that went through, it would normally be called a feasibility study,” said Fagan. What matters, he said, is the confidence the company has in the project’s geology and engineering. True North Gems arrived in the area in 2004 and quickly began an aggressive exploration program that ultimately clinched essential financing for the mine last fall.Ĭonstruction on the mine began last October, and Fagan said the company will forego a traditional feasibility study, although it has issued two pre-feasibility studies, one in 2011 and one in March of this year. A succession of Canadian and Danish companies removed promising bulk and mini-bulk samples from the region, although commercial production never took off. Danish geologists first discovered gems in the region in the mid-1960s. Ruby exploration in southwestern Greenland is not particularly new.
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