Our Business

Traditional Mining, State-of-the-Art Processing

Using open pit mining techniques traditional on the Mesabi Iron Range, PolyMet will mine ore containing copper, nickel, cobalt, platinum, palladium and gold. The company will use modern processing techniques to recover these metals, which are used in everyday products such as electrical wiring, automobile emission controls and medical applications.

Despite the importance of these metals to daily life, the United States currently has no domestic sources of nickel or cobalt. The United States also imports 40% of its copper and between 80% and 95% of its platinum and palladium.

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Capital Costs

In September 2006, PolyMet announced that it has a received a Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS), which confirmed that the project was economically and technically sound. In May 2008, PolyMet updated its DFS capital and operating cost estimates reflecting both cost inflation and design scope changes since the DFS, including facilities needed to ship concentrate prior to construction of hydrometallurgical facilities.

The total capital cost, including two autoclaves and a copper plant to process copper-bearing solutions, was estimated at $602 million, including approximately $100 million of expenditures on measures to protect the environment, $77 million for mining equipment that was assumed to be provided by a mining contract in the DFS has been incorporated as an operating lease in updated operating costs.

The decision to sell concentrate during the construction and commissioning of new metallurgical facilities shortens the initial construction period, makes the project less sensitive to the delivery schedule for long lead time equipment such as autoclave vessels, and means that PolyMet can commence operations of the mine, the existing crushing and milling plant, the existing tailings disposal facilities, and the new flotation circuit, before starting the new hydrometallurgical plant.

As a result of the staged approach, the total initial capital required prior to first production and sales is approximately $312 million.

Since 2008, PolyMet has further refined its development plans and now plans to build the project in two phases:

• Phase I: produce and market concentrates containing copper, nickel, cobalt and precious metals
• Phase II: process the nickel concentrate through a single autoclave, resulting in production and sale of high grade copper concentrate, value added nickel-cobalt hydroxide, and precious metals precipitate products.

The second autoclave and the copper circuit represented approximately $127 million of the total $602 million estimated costs, but will not affect the initial capital costs of $312 million.

PolyMet plans to provide a detailed project update when the project development plans being analyzed for the SDEIS are finalized. This detailed project update will include revised mine plans, process and project improvements, cost inflation since 2008, and will incorporate the latest environmental controls.

Current Status

Notice of Intent (NOI) in Federal Register Intent to prepare a supplemental draft environment…

PolyMet Draft EIS PolyMet Mining Inc.  NorthMet Project Draf…

Corporate Overview PolyMet Corporate Overview…