Yes, this latest spate of announcements all come as a piece.
We've long known Buena Vista as a high-grade, low-impurity deposit, and now this pivot toward producing environmentally friendly high value-add steelmaking products primarily for the US domestic market, capitalises on that advantage.
TheBuena Vista project has a number of key strategic advantages for producing ‘green friendly’ value added products such as Hot Briquetted Iron (HBI) and High Purity Iron (HPI) to supply to the US domestic steel and battery industry. This domestic base will also allow the Company to become the only iron product exporter from the US west coast to buyers in Japan, Korea and China.
The key strengths that underpin this revised strategy include:
- A permitted mine and plant in compliance with State and Federal laws; - A well understood and low impurity resource with substantial drilling and metallurgical testwork already completed; - Readily processed ore, which allows low cost liberation to high grade concentrates; - A substantial land holding, acquired in advance of the rapidly rising cost of land in Western Nevada; - Substantial water rights; - Proximity to energy infrastructure and major rail routes; - Proximity to a number of towns offering a base of accommodation, labour and supplies; - Located in a region of substantial imports of steelmaking raw materials and increasing focus on reduced carbon footprint for steelmaking; - The recently announced Biden administration infrastructure stimulus package comes at atime of growing awareness of t he importance of domestic supplies of key raw materials; and - Nevada was recently voted the number 1 Mining Jurisdiction in the Fraser Institute survey ofglobal mining jurisdictions.
Now in quick order we're seeing US financing and marketing agreements put in place, as well as an agreement to fund and build a commercial-scale green hydrogen plant on the Magnum site inNevada.- all, as I say, of a piece to rapidly accelerate the project.
The agreements with AVF Energy allow Magnum to fast track its mining and green steel development for the local domestic market in the United States. The Company is also well positioned to take advant age of the Biden Administration infrastructure stimulus and to service the growing demand for green friendly infrastructure particularly from California. Newly appointed MD, Dano Chan
