It's the first time in history that chrome, or chromite the mineral, was discovered in the western hemisphere in quantities sufficient to be mined economically, but it goes way beyond that. It is such a large deposit that we can say, even with the little information we have from drilling from surface, that there is a century's worth of mineral there for a large percentage of the world's consumption. You don't want it all, you don't want to be the only supplier, but you want to certainly have a share of the market.
The chromite becomes ferrochrome, and ferrochrome becomes stainless steel. You can't have stainless steel without chrome. There are grades of stainless steel that also have nickel. You can have stainless steel without nickel, but you can't have it without chrome. Stainless steel is about one part chrome and four parts iron.
The world is using ever more stainless steel. For those of you who have had the pleasure of driving on the Gardiner in Toronto, you can see what happens when you use things that do rust, in rebar and.... Our infrastructure just falls apart. Most of the world has gone to a standard of requiring, in new construction of high-rises, bridges, everything, a standard of using stainless steel in reinforcing bar. So it's a metal that will be with us for the foreseeable future.
Traditionally chromite was a byproduct of mining of platinum and palladium in South Africa, so they have huge reserves, but it's different from what we have. They are challenged in that over the last many decades, almost a century, they have invested in a substantial capital plan to refine their chromite into ferrochrome, using electricity. They don't have that electricity to use anymore; they're very challenged. It's an opportunity for Canada to use another method, which that particular part of our industry knew about 50 years ago, and this is what's called “direct reduction”. It doesn't become gas or liquid, it stays in a solid state. The natural gas is the source of heat. Direct reduction of chromite into ferrochrome is a much, much more efficient and environmentally friendly process.
We have a chance here to create an added-value product of ferrochrome. We don't consume it here, but we can export it to where it is consumed. That's tremendously good business for Canada. We would be exporting a small part of our huge blessings of natural gas, and on an annual basis a small part of our huge blessings of chromite.
In mining, as my colleagues can tell you, you can count on the fingers of one hand the mineral occurrences in recorded history that could produce economically beyond a few decades, let alone a century, and perhaps a second century. That's the Ring of Fire. It's phenomenal.
I know, from my time spent in China, that they're very enthusiastic about developing Canada as a source of supply, as an alternative to where the supplies currently come from. They typically buy concentrate or pellets from other places, partly refined material, and then they bring it into China and they use expensive coal, expensive electricity, expensive coal-generated electricity—dirty, dirty processes—to turn it into ferrochrome in China. They're very attracted to the opportunity to participate with us in developing this much better and much cleaner alternative.
I was astonished and very pleased when I saw that at COP21 the leaders of our two countries signed this declaration on using clean technology. That just fit hand in glove for the Ring of Fire opportunity.
I apologize—I can go on for hours, as you can see—but that's it, in a nutshell.