The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Difficulties raising financing have delayed construction of a new-to-North America bioleach plant in Snow Lake. The best-case scenario now, says the head of the company behind the project, is for construction to begin next spring. 'If we are successful in attracting the necessary financing for Snow Lake this Fall we should be building in the Spring, one year behind (our) original plan,' Ross Orr, president of BacTech Environmental Corp., said in an e-mail to shareholders. Orr said that while summer is a slow time for investment activity, he hopes investors 'come back invigorated' this September. He said it has taken BacTech four months to raise $600,000 _ 'and the only way we could secure the funding was through a short-term bridge loan that will be repaid from the upcoming Fall debt financing for Snow Lake.' Orr told shareholders he expects a completed FEED study (Front End Engineering Design) for the bioleach plant early next month. 'The importance of this is we will have a good handle on capital costs as well as a better understanding of the volumes of material we need to dispose of at the end of the bioleach process,' he wrote. 'I fully expect to see a softening of some of the capital costs now that some of the hot air has been let out of the mining market.' BacTech had planned to begin construction this past spring or early summer on a bioleach plant that will purify _ and extract gold from within _ Snow Lake area tailings. 'With the ability of this new technology, what was once seen as a liability can turn into an asset,' MaryAnn Mihychuk, the former provincial mines minister who now oversees BacTech's Manitoba division, told the Winnipeg Free Press in March. Carrying an estimated price tag of $20 million, BacTech's plant will rely on six large tanks, each standing nearly eight metres tall. Inside, bacteria will draw iron and arsenic from tailings fed into the plant.
