Sirius makes solid progress to deliver milestones

SIRIUS Minerals, the developer of the proposed York Potash mine in North Yorkshire, today said it is making “solid” progress in achieving key development milestones to deliver the York Potash project.

Russell Scrimshaw, chairman of Sirius Minerals said the company has come a long way in a relatively short period and continues to make good progress. 

He said: “We have identified and defined the world’s largest and highest grade deposit of polyhalite, for which we have established a strong and growing global market, and we are working towards fulfilling a detailed checklist of approval issues that, once addressed, can provide so many jobs and benefits to the region and the UK and also unlock the next exciting phase of the company’s progression.”

In its interim results to the end of September, the group reported a consolidated pre-tax loss of £6.3m. The group’s cash and cash equivalents was £13.1m which will be used to continue the company’s planning approval work and polyhalite crop studies for the York Potash Project, it said. The group said it will require additional funding to achieve its objectives over the next twelve months, but the directors feel confident that this will be forthcoming from one or more of various alternatives.

Following the announcement of a delay in seeking planning approval earlier this year, Sirius said its focus has been to put in place the work plans and studies that are required to address all the issues that were raised by the North York Moors National Park Authority and its consultants and to ensure that the intricacies of the planning system do not lead to any further unnecessary delays.

Scrimshaw added: “We now have a process in place where the environmental studies for all key parts of our project (mine, pipeline, port and materials handling plant) will be available at the same level of detail and at the same time across the whole project.  In my view this will leave little doubt as to the high environmental standards that we are adopting and will, I believe, show that there are no environmental concerns that cannot either be avoided or mitigated to a satisfactory level. 
 
“We believe the work that our planning teams are currently progressing will further boost the already strong planning policy case. 

“To seek approval within a National Park was never going to be straightforward, but there is no scope to be able to develop the project outside of the National Park. 

“The mine approval essentially centres on the ‘major development test’ that seeks to balance the benefits of the development against any potential impacts on the North York Moors National Park. I remain confident, as our whole team does, that the project is one of the clearest examples possible of the ‘exceptional circumstances’ that are needed to justify such a development in a National Park.  The company believes the case for approval is truly compelling.”

Sirius said the polyhalite market continues to grow and said it looks forward to delivering the next phase of the group’s mission to become “the future of fertilizer”.