Canadian iron-ore producer Champion Iron is evaluating the potential of producing a high-grade direct reduction pellet feed product at its Bloom Lake mine, in Quebec, as decarbonisation efforts by steelmakers in several key markets accelerate.

The company is working on a feasibility study to take eight-million tonnes a year from Bloom Lake, which is in the final stages of a Phase 2 expansion, and upgrade those to 69% iron material.

The company has demonstrated, at laboratory scale, its ability to upgrade its current iron-ore product to more than 69% iron using a flotation process.

“We feel that a flotation plant is a very good potential project for Champion and we will be able to come back to the market once we have the results of the feasibility study, by mid-2022,” CEO David Cataford said in a conference call last week.

He stated that not enough projects to produce direct-reduced iron (DRI) product were being approved at a time when a structural shift was under way in the steel industry to an increased focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“What used to be talked about a few years ago is now materialising. We are seeing more and more electric arc furnaces (EAFs) being sanctioned around the world,” Cataford said, citing examples of clients in Canada, China and Japan investing in EAFs.

“This is not just literature that we are reading. We are actually seeing a boots-on-the ground transition towards EAFs, but we are not seeing any new supply of DRI and there is only so much scrap available in the world to feed these EFAs.”

Champion is also revisiting the feasibility study for the Kamistiatusset (Kami) project to see if it could get the iron product closer to 69%, than the 65% concentrate that the previous owner pencilled in. The results of an updated feasibility study would be completed in the second half of 2022.

Cataford also said that Champion has a large land package with more than eight-billion tonnes of resources a few kilometers away from Bloom Lake that had potential to deliver high-grade material.

“In our land package, we hold pretty much as many resources as the Simandou project [in Africa]. There is nothing associated to that land package that would hinder us from producing 69% material.”

Cataford believes that Quebec’s green power credentials and mineral resources that are easily converted into, or upgradable to, DRI stand Champion in good stead.