Small Town Is Home To Big Time Player

The small town of Sorel-Tracy is just that; a small town on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River about 75 km east of Montreal. It’s a typically quaint French-Canadian community where 97 per cent of its residents speak French only and where the hub of the town’s activities centre at the cross roads of its downtown business district.

Tree-lined streets span outwards from the centre’s four corners of banks and small businesses to modest houses where the majority of the community’s residents live and have done so for generations.

Continuing a little farther outside town, however, is a huge industrial complex that stands in shear contrast to its smaller neighbours just a few kilometers away. In fact, it’s such a massive property that it has its own postal code.

And it deserves it too because the Rio Tinto, Fer et Titane (RTFT) plant that has called 1625 Route Marie-Victorin home for more than 60 years now is not only the size of a mini city in itself, but it’s also the only metallurgical complex of its kind in the world and for that alone, it deserves special recognition.

In fact, the complex is so big (with a capacity to produce more than one million tonnes of titaniferious slag annually), that it’s recognized around the world as the key supplier of titanium dioxide pigment; a compound used in paints, plastics, textiles and papers.

As with all manufacturing operations, location and proximity to customers and raw materials are keys to success and for those reasons, the Sorel-Tracy plant is in the perfect spot. It’s adjacent to the shipping lanes of the St. Lawrence River but more importantly, it’s just down the River from its Ilmenite mine at Lac Tio, an open-pit operation located just 43 km northeast of Harve-Saint-Pierre on the St. Lawrence River.

The mine is the largest massive rock Ilmenite deposit in the world with a life expectancy of more than 40 years at current production rates. Ore from the mine is extracted by blasting and is then crushed and shipped from Lac Tio to Harve-Saint-Pierre by train and onwards and further 800 km down river to Sorel-Tracy by ore carriers.

The reduction plant at Sorel-Tracy has nine smelting furnaces where ore is transformed into titaniferous slags and iron. The slag is crushed and can be sold as is or sized and upgraded.

The ore, after primary crushing, grinding and upgrading by gravity separation (spirals), is further upgraded by thermal treatment in rotary kilns and by magnetic separation. Upgraded kiln-treated ore (UKTO) is the feed for electric-reduction furnaces where pig iron and titania slag are eventually produced. A product called Sorelflux, an Ilmenit ore with specific sizes between 10 and 40 mm, is sold to steel mills throughout the world and is used to protect crucibles in blast furnaces.

Liquid iron is used to produce high-purity pig iron or is transported to the steel plant or the metal powder plant for further processing.

RTFT also produces a titaniferous slag from Ilmenite ore extracted at a new mine in Madagascar. The QIT Madagascar Minerals (QMM) operation consists of a mine, separation plant and port facilities.

The first vessel from Madagascar, with mineral sands, arrived in Canada last year and the mine is expected to produce approximately 750,000 tonnes per year when it reaches full capacity in 2012.

As mentioned at the outset, RTFT complex is almost in the heart of the Sorel-Tracy community and because of its proximity, the company opened a tailing site known as P-84 to receive tailings from the water treatment plant to help ensure strict environmental monitoring of the site.

Over the years the company has also signed a further agreement with Sorel-Tracy for the creation of an outdoor activity centre on part of the reclaimed P-84 site and has made additional contributions of more than $1 million for continuing development in the area.

In addition to its immediate community involvement, RTFT has implemented an extensive air purification program and dust collecting systems have been continuously upgraded so that residues can be reused during the milling process or be recycled.

In the ’90s, the company focused on reducing waste in water at the source and on building a wastewater treatment plant. In fact, the company was awarded the “Merite environmental 1995” prize from the Quebec Ministry of the Environment for its wastewater treatment program and its role in protecting the St. Lawrence River.

Since then, Rio Tinto Fer et Titane has invested more than $215 million in environmental protection and has continued its commitment to protect the environment and nearly $30 million has been invested in different improvement projects, including more than $4 million for reducing community noise levels.