The director of the Nyngan Scandium project visited the town late last year to find out what the township thought of the world’s first primary scandium mine. 

Scandium International Mining Corporation president and CEO George Putnam believes the mine will be serviced with local jobs and will have a very small environmental impact. 

Mr Putnam flew from the United States of America and visited Nyngan in December to discuss Scandium and its uses with interested people within the town. 

Scandium International Mining Corporation, the umbrella company of EMC Metals in Australia, is looking to open the world-first mine in the coming years. 

Mr Putnam said the mine and the mine site were very rare. 

“This is the world’s first primary scandium mine,” he said.

“There’s very little on the planet and nobody knows much about scandium.

“It’s a not a rare earth it’s a mineral.” 

The rare mineral was trading at $2000 per kilogram or $2 million per tonne at the time of the meeting. 

Mr Putnam said the demand for the mineral had developed during the last 30 years. 

“You can build with it way faster than we can supply it. We have more customers than product,” he said. 

The main question at the meeting was what is scandium? 

Mr Putnam, with the help of his planners, explained the rare mineral. 

“It’s a wonderful alloy agent, it’s very expensive, a kilogram costs as much as a tonne of aluminium,” he said.

“It also has some electrical properties, there’s some cutting edge research with turning natural gas into electricity, but this is a revolutionary aspect of scandium. 

“The alloy business alone could support our project here and all our other projects in NSW. 

“We’re thinking about the applications in aeroplanes and cars.”

Mr Putnam said Nyngan was the ideal district to build a mine.

“This is a mining district, there’s going to be qualified people, that’s a good thing. We’re not looking at FIFO (fly in, fly out), the people who are coming in, will live here, I think the community can easily absorb it,” he said. 

“We’ll talk to everyone who’s qualified, we’re not looking at bringing in folks.” 

The mine life is unknown, but Mr Putnam is predicting 20 years currently. 

“We’re starting small and we’re making sure we can push the mine out in front of us, but it could be a 150-year resource,” he said. 

The CEO of the project is also sure the environmental impact will be minimal.

“We have the preliminary environmental impact statement at scandiummining.com there will be a small footprint, a small environmental impact, no water goes in or out and we burn on site,” he said. 

Locals will get another opportunity to ask questions in the upcoming public exhibition which is due to begin early this year.

The report will be on exhibition for four weeks across the shire to inform community members of what to expect. 

In the mean time, we want to know, do you think this mine is a good idea? Let us know by answering the poll at our website www.nynganobserver.com.au