Atlas to build NA’s first salt mine in decades

Atlas Salt (TSXV: SALT) says it plans to develop the Great Atlantic Salt (GAS) deposit in Newfoundland and Labrador into the continent’s first mine for the kitchen and winter road staple in nearly 30 years. 

The GAS project, which is set to initially produce up to 2.5 million tonnes of rock salt annually, is located near the Turf Point Port in western Newfoundland.

Atlas plans a state-of-the-art “salt factory” as the first new underground salt operation in North America, one that would contribute to a “significant” domestic production shortfall, the company said Tuesday. 

The St. John’s-based company intends to use computer firm Oracle’s Aconex cloud-based project and financial management software to save millions of dollars and cut several months off the project timeline set out in the project’s feasibility study issued last May. It will also use Oracle’s NetSuite enterprise resource planning system, Atlas mine project manager Andrew Smith said in Tuesday’s news release. 

“By providing a single source of truth for our data, including drawings, approvals, and documents, we can quickly incorporate feedback from in-field contractors into our project schedules, helping us stay agile and proactive in addressing any scheduling issues or risks,” Smith said. 

Shallow deposit

The GAS deposit was initially discovered through oil and gas exploration. It’s considered one of North America’s largest shallow salt deposits and is beside the Flat Bay gypsum deposit, whose mines produced 15 million tonnes from the 1950s until production ceased in 1990. 

GAS holds 383 million indicated tonnes grading 96% salt and 868 million inferred tonnes grading 95.2% salt, according to an NI-43-101 report. It shows mineral reserves in the probable category total 88.1 million tones at 96% salt.

Share in Atlas Salt were trading at 65¢ apiece in Toronto, valuing the company at $63 million. They’ve traded in a 52-week range of 55¢ to 97¢.

The Oracle software will be able to optimize operations to accelerate project timelines, address potential supply chain disruptions and help control costs, Atlas said. 

“We anticipate that the collaborative tools and methodologies provided by these solutions will result in significant time and cost savings that set us up to achieve our goal to deliver the GAS project as Canada’s next salt mine.”