At least one mid-size international mining company, Canada’s First Quantum Minerals, has recently joined the party, taking over the 5-million-mt/y nickel-copper ore open-pit mine development project at Kevitsa in Finland. Another Canadian firm, Gold-Ore Resources, has acquired a 90% stake in the polymetallic Norrliden project from the Lundin subsidiary North Atlantic Natural Resources, having already purchased the Bjorkdal gold mine in the Skellefte mining field in Sweden.

Two Finnish projects that were well advanced last year, Kittilä and Talvivaara, are in the process of starting metal production while, at the time of writing, Lappland Goldminers is awaiting the Swedish Supreme Environmental Court’s ruling regarding a permit for the company’s proposed Faboliden gold mine and processing plant. Meanwhile Lappland recently acquired first the Pahtavaara gold operation in Finland, where it has restarted the process plant already, and then the processing plant and mines in Blaiken and Svärtträsk from the bankrupt Scan Mining and hopes to restart these operations in Fall 2008. The British company Angus & Ross now has a 30-year license to mine zinc, lead and silver ore at the historic Black Angel mine in western Greenland and expects to start production later this year or early in 2009. Northland Resources has decided to fast track Tapuli, one of a number of iron ore projects it is advancing on the Sweden/Finland border.

Among the major Swedish mining firms, LKAB has started up the new KA3 iron ore concentrator and KK4 pelletizing plant at the Kiruna operation and the new flotation plant at Svappavaara, while the MK3 pelletizing plant at Malmberget is now working at full capacity. Boliden’s major Aitik 36 expansion program is proceeding toward start-up in 2010 And Lundin has started work on the new mining and processing facilities required to produce copper at Zinkgruvan (as well as starting production at the Aljustrel mine and expanding Neves-Corvo in Portugal). And Finland’s Outokumpu has initiated the mining and processing expansion at Kemi needed for the expansion of ferrochrome production at Tornio.

Meanwhile exploration interest in the Fenno-Scandian shield remains considerable. For instance, in Sweden 349 new exploration permits were granted during 2007, mostly in the three northern provinces, and 144 existing permits were extended.

A major part of the engineering and equipment required for these projects has been supplied by Nordic manufacturers, not only the big global players but also smaller specialist companies. Given the boom conditions prevailing in the world mining and processing equipment market this domestic pressure may have been a mixed blessing but the region’s suppliers, as well as some further afield, have worked hard to provide equipment on schedule or with limited delays. Similarly contractors have been very supportive even though demand for their services has kept them at full stretch.

We start this report in Finland with the new Talvivaara and Kittilä mines now coming to production, which will both use leaching technology though of quite different kinds, followed by the expansion at Kemi.