By NICK STEWART
Avalon Ventures Ltd. hopes to bring at least one of its two Northern Ontario mineral deposits into commercial production by 2008.
“We really think we’re into an area of the minerals sector that has huge growth potential as the public demands technology that benefits the environment,” says Don Bubar, president.
Located near the village of Foleyet, 100 kilometres west of Timmins, the junior miner’s Warren Township project is the only deposit in North America to feature calcium feldspar. This unique ore has a number of properties that make it attractive to glass manufacturers, Bubar says.
“The way calcium feldspar behaves in a furnace, it reduces the amount of energy required to create glass, which in turn reduces the amount of fossil fuels the company uses overall.”
Bubar says a “major American glass manufacturer” has shown interest in Avalon’s deposit. The unnamed company has requested up to 1,000 tons of samples of calcium feldspar, which are extracted from the site and converted to the necessary format at an Alberta mill. The samples are then shipped to the manufacturer, who is using them as part of a full-scale trial in furnaces that melt down materials to produce glass.
The test run results will be made available to Avalon by July 2007. Should they indicate a reduction in energy consumption and a problem-free manufacturing process, Avalon will receive a contract to produce calcium feldspar on a commercial basis. This will lead to the establishment of a quarry, with a mill to be built adjacent to Foleyet’s CN Rail line by the end of 2008.
As the manufacturer has not ordered a large volume of samples but is also partially subsidizing the cost of producing them, Bubar says the company is likely confident in the results they’ve seen thus far.
“We’re feeling pretty positive about it. They wouldn’t be putting in this kind of investment if they didn’t believe in it. It looks good, certainly.”
Of additional use to the manufacturer is the fact that calcium feldspar features a combination of calcium, alumina and silica. As the company sources each of those elements separately from quartz, clay and limestone for use in its manufacturing processes, Avalon can provide all three elements in a single feedstock.
The Warren Township site has a resource of 800,000 tons of ore at its explored depth of 30 metres. This leads Bubar to believe that the deposit could be much larger, possibly reaching as high as 11 million tons.
This is the same size as Avalon’s lithium-tantalum deposit at its Separation Rapids site, 70 kilometres north of Kenora. Should the Warren Township deposit move into commercial production, Bubar says the Separation Rapids site could also be of use to the manufacturer. It is one of four deposits of its kind in the world to be of a commercially viable size, and its metallic properties also lend it to similar uses as calcium feldspar.
With two Northern Ontario sites having the potential to reduce energy consumption, and its Thor Lake property in the Northwest Territories producing rare metals that can be used in hybrid cars, Bubar says its unique holdings will be instrumental in marketing the company as environmentally-friendly.
“People see that as really ironic because we portray ourselves as a green mining company. They take issue with that, saying ‘That’s an oxymoron! You miners do nothing but dig holes and mess up the environment,’ which is just not true. A lot of the minerals that can be mined and we hope to mine have the exact opposite effect on the environment.”
