Baffinland Iron Mines
The high-grade iron ore deposits were discovered in 1962 and taken to lease by Baffinland Iron Mines Limited in 1971. Exploration and development work was re-started by Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation in 2004, which currently owns three mining leases covering approximately 1,600 hectares (about 4,000 acres) in the Mary River area of Baffin Island. Baffinland is a mineral exploration and development company with a sole focus on the advancement of its Mary River Property, which consists of five high-grade iron ore (hematite/magnetite) deposits. Perhaps it was fate that McCloskey would end up running the operation that will finally get to dig in Canada’s pristine north. His career path has been intrinsically linked to Mary River for more than 30 years through his work with a number of mining companies. Who better to explain the history of false dawns and the current optimism that Mary River might finally fulfill its promise? “Part of the problem is that the site is situated on North Baffin Island, well above the treeline, meaning that the terrain is spectacular but remote—we have rolling hills, lakes and seasonal rivers to contend with, and in summer there are 24 hours of daylight and in winter 24 hours of darkness,” McCloskey comments. “Deposit No. 1 is 500 meters above the land and can be seen for miles around,” he continues. “The main handicap to this project has always been shipping. If there is an ideal product coming out of the Arctic, this is it. It’s a quarry at the end of a rail line. This opportunity offers everything a miner could ever want: the highest grade of iron ore on earth and well over a billion tonnes [metric tons] of resources. But it also throws up ice as a challenge.” Back in the days when Mary River had first been discovered, the remote location became
a center of national sovereignty and a pawn in a fierce general election, as McCloskey well remembers. “Mary River became a political asterisk in the 1960s; after two feasibility studies were performed, a political storm ensued over the ‘pristine Canadian North being exploited’ by foreign powers—and given that those powers came from a South Africa-owned Anglo-American company, that did not go down very well. “After those problems came the discovery of iron ore deposits in Australia and Brazil,” he continues, “and the money that could have been spent here was instead used on projects where the logistics were much easier.” McCloskey says that since then a succession of fractured ownerships never gave the Mary River project the impetus to get off the ground. “Like many mining projects, every mine needs a champion for its cause, but there was split ownership; shortly after the discovery Murray Watts promoted the site, and all the base metal companies in Toronto gave money, but the result was a fractured ownership. “I became involved with a private company controlling leases in the mid-70s at a time when iron ore was not of much interest and prices were low. At the bottom of the market a few years ago, the purchase of a northern Australian mine brought Gordon McCreary and I together, and we started to talk about approaching Hudson Bay, which owned 47 percent of Mary River. “After a couple of discussions it became apparent that we could purchase their interest,” McCloskey continues, ”so in 2004 we underwent the conversion of a private company into a public one and the new Baffinland was born. Initially the investment of $5.5 million was raised through friends and business associates.”
DECEMBER 10 www.bus-ex.com
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