Tata Steel and New Millennium Iron Corporation, its partner in the Taconite project in Canada, are planning to rope in additional partners as the feasibility study for the joint venture nears completion.

According to the information available from New Millennium, the prospective partners could be financial entities or companies with technical expertise, but the search for partners will be intensified once a detailed report on the project is ready.

The Taconite project relates to one of the world’s biggest iron ore reserves, present across a 150-kilometre prolific iron ore tract spread over the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec.

Tata Steel owns 26% of New Millennium (largest single stakeholder) and has 80% off-take agreement from the region, which is expected to be largely used for its plants in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

?We are very pleased to be close to completing and publishing the results of the feasibility study,? said Dean Journeaux, president and chief executive officer, New Millennium, and added that a detailed report will be ready by the end of the year.

?It (Taconite project) is a very large undertaking with many stakeholders. We have been working closely with Tata Steel to develop the most robust project fundamentals and look forward to continuing these efforts. Also, we will intensify the ongoing search for additional partners for the Taconite Project once the feasibility report on technical and financial information can be made available to prospective parties”.

Tata Steel did not reply to an e-mail query on the subject, but analysts said though the project is huge in size, they are not ascribing any value to it as currently no timelines have been declared by the company.

Also, since the project has reserves of magnetite ore (lower iron or Fe content), Tata Steel will have to rope in a major mining player with technical expertise as a partner to develop the reserves, he said.

New Millennium controls the entire range called Millennium Iron Range and currently hosts two advanced projects, the LabMag and K?Mag iron ore reserves.

LabMag contains 3.5 billion tonne of proven and probable reserves plus 1 billion tonne of measured and indicated resources and 1.2 billion tonne of inferred resources. The K?Mag contains 2.1 billion tonne of proven and probable reserves, 0.3 billion tonne of measured and indicated resources and a billion tonne of inferred resources.

However, at current estimates, the actual recoverable reserves are calculated on the basis of proven and probable reserves, which pegs the total reserve of the project at 5.6 billion tonne.

?Therefore, essentially, the recoverable iron ore reserves of the project will be around 1.5 billion tonne since the Fe content of these reserves are around 30%,? the analyst said, and added that even at these levels, it is still one of the biggest reserves.

In fact, this reserve is over three times bigger than Sesa Goa’s India reserves of 300 million tonne and its reserves of magnetite ore in Liberia, called the Western Cluster project.

The analyst also said that while no value has been ascribed to the Taconite project, by December, details will be out on the project cost, the areas to focus on (where Fe content is high) and the kind of partners that will be brought in.

In case of magnetite ore, a company needs the support of big mining players who have the potential to extract and produce iron ore. Therefore, the search is probably on for a mining player with technical capabilities.

Tata Steel, in association with New Millennium, also owns 80% of the Direct Shipping Ore project, which is expected to close the year with an output of 1 million tonne per annum (mtpa), and will be ramped up to 6 mtpa in subsequent years.

The DSO project, located in the same region as the Taconite project, has an Fe content of 63%, according to Tata Steel’s FY13 annual report.