Chatham Rock consent decision due in January

The Environmental Protection Agency's decision-making committee considering the consent for would-be phosphate miner Chatham Rock Phosphate [NZAX: CRP] has closed its hearing, and is expected to make a ruling on the project next month.

The committee formally closed hearings today, and has 20 working days to make its decision, which given the Christmas holidays, is expected to be early next year, it said in a statement. The two-month public hearing adjourned last month for the committee to consider the information it received, and it said today that it didn't need any more feedback.

Chatham Rock, which was this week one of 15 companies to gain research and development grants from government agency Callaghan Innovation, said it was confident it had put forward a compelling case and shown it can manage the environmental impacts.

The company plans to mine phosphate nodules at depths of up to 450 metres, initially within its 820 square kilometre mining permit area for five years. After that it would widen its activity to a 5,207 sq km area for up to a further 30 years. Annual extraction is targeted at 1.5 million tonnes of the nodules.

The involvement of Dutch dredging firm Royal Boskalis is key in the application in that the company will provide the engineering expertise to undertake the project, drawing on its own experience and also creating bespoke solutions for the operation.

A major issue for the committee is the impact of the plume of discharged sediment from the mining operation and how it disperses. Boskalis plans to blast jets of water into the ocean floor to loosen the seabed and suck up sand for separation and extraction of the phosphate, before dispersing it through a hose. Among concerns from the project's opposition is whether clay, referred to as chalk ooze and which typically lies below the proposed layer of sand to be mined, would be sucked up into the suction system.

The NZAX-listed shares fell 2.6 percent to 18.5 cents today, and have dropped 36 percent this year.

Chatham Rock has raised more than $33 million from shareholders over the past four years to fund its development, including bringing in dredging experts, building a business case and hiring experts for its consent hearings.

(BusinessDesk receives funding from Callaghan Innovation to write on the commercialisation of innovation.)

(BusinessDesk)