Nunavut regulators to receive new Izok mine proposal in December 2013: MMG

MMG says it will submit a new project description for its Izok Corridor project, show here, in December 2013. (FILE IMAGE)

MMG Resources Inc. told the Nunavut Impact Review Board May 6 to expect a new project description for its Izok Corridor project in December 2013.

Until then the company plans to undertake “additional feasibility work and further consultation with stakeholders,” said Sabha Safavi, MMG’s project manager in Canada.

Last month, MMG Resources put the brakes on its Izok Corridor zinc-copper mine and port project in western Nunavut, which had been recently accepted for an environmental review by the Nunavut Impact Review Board.

In an April 18 letter to Safavi, Ryan Barry, the NIRB’s executive director, asked MMG to say when the company planned to submit its new project description.

The NIRB received the first project description for MMG’s Izok Corridor proposal, outlining its plans for a huge, two-mine zinc-copper complex in Nunavut’s Kitikmeot region, with a 350-kilometre all-weather road and a new port at Grays Bay, in September 2012.

But on April 16 MMG said it had “recently identified some additional project design options with potential to improve the economic viability of the project.”

These included changes to the mining schedule and production rates, improvements to the execution plan, and the possible addition of a new property to the mining plan.

“MMG is currently initiating a process to further develop and evaluate these options so that they can be considered for incorporation in the feasibility design,” the company’s letter to the NIRB said.

An indication of MMG’s waning interest in the project surfaced during April’s Nunavut Mining Symposium in Iqaluit, where MMG revealed it is planning to spend only $6 million on minimal exploration on its Kitikmeot properties in 2013.

In her keynote address to the symposium, Patricia Mohr, an economics and commodity market specialist with Scotiabank, also said mining companies are now examining project development more critically with some reconfiguring to cut costs.