The Trough, otherwise known as the Labrador Quebec Fold Belt, extends for more than 1,100 km along the eastern margin of the Superior Craton from Ungava Bay to Lake Pletipi, Quebec. The belt is about 100 km wide in its central part and narrows considerably to the north and south. Adriana’s Property is located north of the Grenville Front in the Churchill Province where the Trough rocks have been subject to greenschist or subgreenschist grade metamorphism and the principal iron formation unit is known as the Sokoman Formation. The lithological units of interest on the Property due to their iron content are members of the Sokoman.

The Lac Otelnuk deposits are composed of iron formations of the Lake Superior-type. This type of iron formation consists of banded sedimentary rocks composed principally of bands of magnetite and hematite within quartz (chert)-rich rock, with variable amounts of silicate, carbonate and sulphide lithofacies. Such iron formations have been the principal sources of iron throughout the world. Lithofacies that are not highly metamorphosed or altered by weathering are referred to as taconite and the Lac Otelnuk deposits are examples of this type.

Mineralization in the iron formation consists mainly of magnetite (Fe3O4) and hematite (Fe2O3), however, some iron also occurs in siderite and ferro-ankerite. Iron oxide bands containing concentrations of magnetite and/or hematite alternate with grey chert of jasper.

The mining method selected for the Project is a conventional open pit consisting of drilling and blasting and a truck and shovel operation with a designed bench height of 15 m. Trees will be cleared prior to the start of mining. Next, a mining contractor will remove the topsoil and overburden using a fleet of dozers, excavators and haul trucks. The ore and waste rock will be drilled, blasted, and then loaded with large mining shovels into a fleet of rigid frame trucks which will haul the material either to the primary crushers, the low grade stockpiles, or the mine rock piles (for the waste rock).

The process plant will treat magnetite ore extracted from the Lac Otelnuk open pit mine located in the Nunavik region of the province of Quebec, about midway north in the Labrador Trough iron range, to produce a concentrate. The Project will be developed in two (2) phases: Phase 1 will produce 30 Mt/y of iron ore concentrate and Phase 2 will produce 20 Mt/y to bring the plant to 50 Mt/y capacity. The process plant involves multiple grinding and milling stages followed by a conventional magnetite recovery circuit with desliming thickeners and magnetic separators to produce a pellet feed iron concentrate.

The process plant is designed to treat approximately 188.7 Mt/y of taconite ore with an average magnetite content of 18.2 % and Fe grade of approximately 28.7 % that will permit production of concentrate with a Fe content of about 68 % and less than 4 % silica. Operating 365 days per year, the process plant will recover a nominal 50 Mt/y of pellet feed iron ore concentrate. The plant design is based on a 30 year mine life.