The far far far north

March 14, 2013

Ironbark Zinc Limited is proposing a zinc mine at about 82.5 degrees north latitude in Greenland, making it the most northerly mining project.

The Citronen Zinc-Lead Project represents one of the world’s largest undeveloped zinc-lead resources (7th in size) with a resource in excess of 13 billion pounds of contained zinc and lead metal. The project is located in northern Greenland, a self-governed part of the Kingdom of Denmark and has a low level of sovereign risk. To date in excess of 67,000m of diamond drilling has been completed at the Citronen Project. The current resource estimate for Citronen is 70 B metric tonnes of ore, with a 3.5% cut-off, yielding more than 13 B lbs of zinc.

The minesite is close to tidewater. Ironbark has a strategic partnership with China Nonferrous Metal Industry’s Foreign Engineering and Construction Co. Ltd (NFC) with access to Chinese debt finance. The company is finalizing a feasibility study and targeting production between 140,000 and 220,000 tpa zinc metal and ~10,000 tpa lead metal over a mine life of at least 14 years. Ironbark contemplates a $500M CAPEX project later in the decade.

Ironbark is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX:IBG) and specialises in base metal exploration and development in Greenland and Australia

There is a mine on Spitsbergen, the largest island in the geographically isolated Svalbard archipelago, situated at 78° north, but this project is further north yet.

Commentary

There are more than a few of the idiosyncrasies with this project:

• The company, Ironbark, is proposing to mine zinc, not iron.
• The company’s URL is ironbarkgold, rather than ironbarkzinc. I am confused.
• The project Citronen has nothing to do with a French car Citroen.
• The miners are Australians, people who inhabit the hottest continent of blazing +50 C summer heat. Yes they are coming to mine in northern Greenland where -40 C is normal.

Sources

• a)http://www.ironbarkgold.com.au/citronen-flythrough



• b)http://www.ironbarkgold.com.au/images/stories/Ironbark_June_2012.pdf



• c)http://www.fennerdunlop.com/arctic_Mining