Sep. 10, 2010 - Canada's Empire Mining will start minining next year what appear to be viable reserves of rich chrome ore at the Bulqiza mine northeast of Albania's capital Tirana, its chief executive officer said on Friday.
Empire Mining had examined Albanian government data and found there were potentially very significant extensions to the Bulqiza chrome ore body, which has historically produced more than 20 million tonnes of chromite.
Until Albania's Communist regime fell in 1990, the Bulqiza and Batra mines accounted for the bulk of the chrome output when Albania was the world's third largest chrome exporter.
David Cliff, Empire Mining's chief executive officer and president, told Reuters the reserves were at accessible depth, and close to some existing underground infrastructure, which amounted to "quite an important breakthrough".
"We believe there is going to be enough there to support a mining operation in the future," Cliff said in an interview.
But the complication of the structure meant Empire will skip conventional mining operations and instead drill from existing underground structures to understand the best way of mining the chromite.
"We can explore, develop and mine as part of an integrated process, that is the way we intend to go," the official said.
"We want to explore the whole body," he said. "There is no doubt now that the fundamental geological interpretation we came to a year ago is correct. That is very exciting for the potential of the area".
COSTS
He said Empire believed the maximum cost will be $10 million before they recovered some of the costs from chromite sales. Around $4 million had been secured for a 3 percent royalty from Anglo-Pacific Group PLC.
Empire plans to raise money by finding a partner either to help develop the mine or buy the product on a long-term basis, perhaps from China, which has now turned into a key investor in the mineral industry, Cliff said.
"If you talk to people in the business in China they know this chromite very well because they all bought chromite from Bulqiza in the past," Cliff said.
After Communist Albania broke with the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, China became Tirana's main political and trade partner.
Elsewhere in the Balkans, Empire has had some encouraging drill results in a copper project in Turkey with Anatolia Minerals since 2008, but had not done any work there last year.
"Now we plan to drill some more and put together a resource estimate by early next year, looking at ways to possibly explore that deposit within the next two years," he said.
In Serbia, it is at very early exploration stage of copper and gold projects in southern Serbia, in Kursumlija and Zuta Reka close to the town of Nis and Nevlje close to Bulgaria.
