While Rio Tinto is counting on Elysis technology to be able to manufacture green aluminum one day, ArcelorMittal is not to be outdone and is preparing its own ecological shift at its iron pellet plant in Port-Cartier, around 70 kilometers west of Sept-Îles.

As a preamble, the steelmaker will begin work on a flotation plant worth 205 million by the end of the year.

“We are to complete the feasibility study by the end of the summer,” said Julien Lampron, vice-president of corporate affairs and strategy at ArcelorMittal Mining Canada, responsible for mining, in an interview. iron at the Mont-Wright mine in Fermont, and the pellet plant in Port-Cartier. At that time, we will have an idea of ​​the number of workers on site and the duration of the work. We hope to proceed with the awarding of contracts and the engineering work by the end of the year,” he said.

The use of electric arc furnaces is indeed facilitated by the use of iron pellets rather than bulk iron concentrate.

The flotation system makes it possible to produce a high quality direct reduction pellet from which the silica present in the iron concentrate will have been significantly reduced. The traditional method of making pellets is mechanical, by gravity.

The announcement of the investment dates back to November 2021 during the COP26 on climate held in Glasgow. At the time, there was talk of 250 to 300 jobs during the construction of the new factory; a dozen, then, eventually.

In the community, we are preparing for the opening of the construction site. “We work in collaboration with them,” said Bernard Gauthier, general manager of Port-Cartier Economic Development. Accommodation needs for construction workers are identified. Like everywhere else in Quebec, we have a problem with accommodation. There is work to be done upstream before launching these projects. »

“The ideal on the North Shore is to start construction early in the spring and only have to go through one winter,” advises the experienced industrial commissioner who wants to see the arrival of construction workers in 2024.

At the same time, Arcelor has undertaken to dust off its project to add a third production line for iron pellets to its plant on the North Shore. The investment was estimated at 700 million a decade ago.

The multinational has just added a mandate to the register of Quebec lobbyists concerning the financing of its expansion with Investissement Quebec and the Minister of the Economy Pierre Fitzgibbon.

“We are at the preliminary stage, intervenes Mr. Lampron. We are at the stage of relaunching the project by updating the pre-feasibility study based on data from the project studied about ten years ago,” he explains.

Iron from the North Shore is sought after by buyers, argues ArcelorMittal, because it is more concentrated than that from Australia, the world’s largest producer, so its use releases fewer GHGs than lower-grade concentrate. Its direct competitors in this regard are Brazil, Russia and Ukraine. The commercial relations of these last two countries are hampered by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.