TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Prospective marine miner Nautilus Minerals has awarded Siemens International Trading (Shanghai), a subsidiary of Siemens, the entire electrical installation contract for its support vessel currently being designed and built by Fujian Mawei Shipbuilding, in Fujian province, in south-eastern China.
TSX-listed Nautilus CEO Mike Johnston on Monday noted that the electrical package marked the fourth major long-lead-time package to be awarded by the shipyard.
“We are especially pleased to be partnering with another world-class, global company such as Siemens. Their involvement with our first seafloor production system, along with other industry heavyweights such as GE Oil and Gas, Sandvik, Soil Machine Dynamics, Rolls Royce, Bedeschi and McGregor highlights the quality of the system that we are building,” he said.
Nautilus was pioneering the concept of mining the ocean bed for copper, gold, zinc and silver.
The company was exploring for high-grade polymetallic seafloor massive sulphide deposits at 1 600 m below the surface of the Bismarck Sea, off the coast of Papua New Guinea, within the Western Pacific Ocean’s Rim of Fire. The operation aimed to produce ore at a rate of more than 1.3-million tons a year, with the capacity to ultimately ramp up to 1.8-million tons a year of dewatered ore, which would be delivered to the Port of Rabaul.