By Anne Fletcher
Commerce Resources Corp. (TSXV: CCE; FSE: D7H), bolstered by its latest drill results, is on track to break ground on North America’s first stand alone tantalum/niobium mine within two years.
However, that’s not going to happen fast enough to help The Boeing Company meet a 2008 year-end delivery deadline for its new 787 Dreamliner commercial aircraft.
Chicago-based Boeing, in a move that points to a global shortage of tantalum, has recently pushed its Dreamliner schedule back by six months. The first 30 to 35 of the new passenger aircraft won’t be delivered until 2009, because of both software integration problems and a shortage of corrosion-resistant tantalum fasteners.
Commerce is still in the midst of a two-year-long provincial environmental assessment on its Upper Fir property, 300 kilometers north of Kamloops, in central British Columbia, which should be done by May or June 2008.
With that certificate in hand, the Vancouver-based company will then turn to the British Columbia Ministry of Mines for a permit to work its Blue River property in the interior of the province.
If all goes well, the permit will come through in time for a 2009 spring start.
Tantalum has the highest capacitance of any metal known, meaning the ability to hold and release electrical charge instantaneously. That makes it essential to most electronic devices as the material used for the capacitors found in most consumer goods such as mobile phones, computers and digital cameras as well as in automotive applications (anti-locking brakes, airbag-firing mechanisms) and medical technologies such as hearing aids and pacemakers.
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