"Unless you're growing your infrastructure, you're not in the game"
- Autores: Bruce McMichael
- Localización: Industrial Minerals, ISSN 0019-8544, Nº. 545, 2013
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
Ports authorities and mining companies work closely together to improve logistics infrastructure. For example, the Port of Saguenay on the St Lawrence Seaway, northeast of Quebec, is a major transit import port for fluorspar used in the nearby Rio Tinto Alcan aluminium plant. The port is currently investing in a major development, boosted by an injection of C$15m of federal government money. Regional mining company Arianne Resources (to be renamed Arianne Phosphate from May 2013), will focus on its phosphate mining interests and divest its holding in gold and base metals, vanadium, is set to be a major customer of the port (see pp.21-24). The company is focused on developing its Lac ^ Paul phosphorus-titanium project in Quebec and has identified Saguenay port and its C$34m, three-phase project to develop an intermodal industrial park at Grande Anse Marine Terminal, as its export hub.
East Coast Canada, popularly known as Atlantic Canada, is the setting for a booming offshore oil and gas sector. With a growing number of world-class projects on stream or coming on stream, ports sited on the Newfoundland and Labrador coast are being upgraded to meet predicted increased demand for supporting the rigs with raw materials including industrial mineral-packed drilling muds. While Canada's export of coal, iron and grain shipments are vastly larger than its exports of industrial minerals (see p.45), the products are often exported from the same ports.
"Unless you're growing your infrastructure, you're not in the game. Simple as that," Geoff Machum, chair of the Halifax Port Authority, said. He believes the sector should to look at the longer term, and not be distracted volatile end-markets driven booming shale gas market in the US and economic problems across the EU.
