The legacy of Minnesota’s Iron Range lives on – in the iron that built America, in its communities built from a cultural melting pot, in remaining iron resources in ponds and stockpiles. And in those legacy materials are potential for the industry to transition to greener iron and steel making.
NRRI is pleased to provide critically important research data that helps facilitate this transition in collaboration with industry partners such as MagIron, LLC.
According to MagIron’s recent press release, the company recently announced a maiden inferred (i.e., based on limited sampling) mineral resource of 2.6 billion metric tonnes with an average iron content of 36.82 percent. According to the announcement, this estimate excludes the legacy iron-bearing stockpiled materials available to MagIron, which is expected to support over 20 years of MagIron Plant 4 operations.
Using developing technologies tested by NRRI on samples from the Canisteo mine pit, it was confirmed that this mineral resource should be amenable to Direct Reduced Grade (DRG) ore concentrate. This higher iron content product is an important step toward Direct Reduced Iron (DRI), which is the feedstock to more efficient steelmaking in electric arc furnaces.
In the release, Larry Lehtinen, CEO of MagIron commented: “We are delighted to announce this mineral resource that illustrates the globally significant endowment of Direct Reduced quality iron ore effectively controlled by MagIron. The presence of this large, partially pre-stripped deposit adjacent to MagIron’s Plant 4 presents a compelling growth opportunity.”
The location and quality of the resource positions MagIron to become a major supplier of direct reduction grade iron products. The mineral resource estimate was prepared by an independent firm, Global Minerals Engineering, in accordance with generally accepted mine and geologic engineering methods and standards for the State of Minnesota.
“This area has great potential for inground mining of hematite resources using present and future mineral processing technologies,” said David Meineke, president and CEO at Global Minerals Engineering, in the company’s press release.
MagIron will continue to make advancements in financing, engineering and permitting toward producing these direct reduction grade iron products. NRRI continues to provide material characterization and bench-scale beneficiation and pelletizing testing to support this effort.
About MagIron
MagIron LLC is focused on the restart of Plant 4, a modern, past-producing iron ore concentrator benefiting from over $170 million of prior investment. The facility has previously operated at an annualized run-rate of approximately 2.0 million tonnes per year of blast furnace grade concentrate and was designed to expand to 3.0 million tonnes per year.