Arctic Platinum

The project (aka Suhanko) is situated adjacent to the Arctic Circle, in Northern Finland about 60 km south of the town of Rovaniemi.

The project is designed as a conventional open pit mining operation. The mineable portion of the mineral resource is 75,000,000 tonnes that, at the proposed milling rate of 21,500 t/d, would provide a project life of 10.0 years.

The Konttijärvi and Ahmavaara PGE-copper-nickel deposits are located approximately 3 km from each other. The Konttijärvi designed open pit has dimensions of approximately 500 m wide, 900 m long and up to 160 m deep while the Ahmavaara designed open pit has dimensions of approximately 500 m wide, 1,800 m long and up to 225 m deep.

Blast holes will be drilled using conventional drills. A hydraulic shovel will be used to excavate blasted waste rock and load 180t haul trucks. The waste rock and overburden will be hauled to the nearby waste rock and overburden storage areas. All potentially acid generating waste rock will be sub aqueously stored in the exhausted Konttijärvi pit.

A large wheel loader will be used to excavate blasted mineralized material and load 180t haul trucks. The material will be hauled to a 62 by 75 in gyratory crusher.

Another wheel loader will be available to serve as a back-up unit to the main production loader and to reclaim material from the stockpile located at the crusher. Haul roads will be maintained using a large grader, and road dust will be controlled using a water truck.

Key pit equipment include two production blasthole drills, two face shovels, two front end loaders, fourteen haul trucks, two road graders, two RT dozers and two dozers.

Blasting and site security will be contracted out.

The grinding circuit consists of a 10.4-m diameter by 6.7-m long, open circuit SAG mill followed by a 7.9-m diameter by 12.2-m long ball mill in closed circuit with a cyclone cluster. A HP 500 cone crusher is included in the grinding circuit to break circulating mill oversize. The feed is ground to 80% passing 75 microns and the cyclone overflow passes directly to the copper flotation circuit.

A conventional flotation circuit would be employed and consists of copper flotation, copper concentrate column cleaning, copper/nickel rougher and scavenger flotation, copper/nickel concentrate regrinding, copper/nickel concentrate cleaning, and bulk concentrate thickening and filtration.