The following is from the Q4 2021 NR of Champion Iron who operates a mine and concentrator of exceptiona quality at Bloom Lake . I suggest you obtain the entire NR from the championironmines.com website. This is not bashing. This is true and not to be ignored. It was released this morning.
During the first half of the year ended March 31, 2021, the Company also received confirmation from DR pellet producers and DR plant operators that its initial commercial production test, completed during the fourth quarter of the 2020 fiscal year, qualified as DR iron ore concentrate. With this confirmed product specification, in the three-month period and year ended March 31, 2021, the Company produced respectively 374,400 wmt and 575,700 wmt of DR quality iron ore concentrate, at an average of 67.7% Fe, with an average combined silica and alumina content of 2.8%. This demonstrates the ability of the Company to produce and sell higher quality iron ore products. DR quality iron ore production strategically positions the Company to potentially increase its customer base and confirms that Bloom Lake is one of the few producing deposits globally that can transition its product offering in response to a potential shift in the steelmaking methods in the coming years.
Additionally, as part of its commitment to participate in the iron and steel industry decarbonization, the Company has financed and collaborated with a European-based company which holds a proprietary cold agglomeration technology. The objective of the cold pelletizing technology is to substantially reduce the emissions linked to the agglomeration of its material. Promising laboratory results demonstrated that carbon emissions related to agglomeration could be reduced by more than 95% with this technology. The Company intends to further explore the potential of cold pelletizing technologies towards industrial trials, with this European-based company.
Will this have a substantial effect on PYR? ? The world's actual pelletizers will not scrap their actual plants, of that I am sure. Slow transition will probably be the reality as is usual in this business that requires vast mineral and capital resources and usually takes a long view. If cold pelletizing is viable it could become the go to method of decarbonizing for those not having easy access to green electricity.