MITTIMATALIK/POND INLET - The search for much-need cash to finance the continued development of the $4 billion Mary River iron project continues for Baffinland Iron Mines, and while no strategic partners have emerged yet and activity at the site was drastically reduced this year, training to prepare Nunavummiut for eventual work at the mine still continued.

From left, Pond Inlet resident Levi Qamaniq and Nuna Logistics trainer Glenn Jenkins attend a small ceremony at Baffinland Iron Mine's Mary River camp to mark the completion of a heavy equipment training program - photo courtesy of Mike Richards

This summer, as Baffinland mounted a one-drill exploration program at the Mary River deposit, located 160 km south of Pond Inlet, eight members of the community received heavy equipment training at a nearby reclamation site.

Last week, the participants celebrated the end of their training with a dinner and presentation, accompanied by Pond Inlet mayor Abraham Kublu and senior administrative officer Mike Richards.

"You can see the pride of accomplishment and success," said Richards.

"The thing is, they're working in a very restricted environment. There's no other distractions while they're thinking and working while the machines were running." Earlier this year, in response to the global economic slowdown, Baffinland significantly cut back the number of jobs at Mary River, from over 400 last year to 60 this summer.

"In 2008, we had 453 Nunavut land claims beneficiaries on the payroll at varying times," said Gord McCreary, president and CEO of Baffinland.

"That's probably, as an exploration project, the ... largest private employer in Nunavut territory."

But even with less work to go around, the recent training candidates still have other places where they can put their skills to use, like a DEW line reclamation site near Clyde River. The community of Pond Inlet also stands to benefit, said Richards.

"It's another resource that we can use and it makes them more employable," he said. "When (Baffinland) is up and running or running a little more aggressively, they're going to need the experienced people. And it's going to help us, because then those people have some decent training, especially on safety, looking around on the work environment, things we kind of overlook."

Meanwhile, Richards and the mayor continue to get updates on the development status of Mary River, which Baffinland believes is host to enough iron to keep the mine going for 48 years, according to recent estimates by Baffinland.

"The original plan, I believe, was to try and get development going for 2014. But they're still assembling money and looking for partners," said Richards.

For now, Baffinland is holding back on any predictions for when construction of any of the mine's infrastructure will be built, instead focusing on finding a partner to help prod the project further into development and fund additional environmental baselines studies and drilling, said McCreary.

As for the project's regulatory status, McCreary said he expects the terms of reference for the environmental impact study to be received by the company by the end of October. But again, how quickly the company can begin work on that study depends on money.

"We're not funded for that. That's contingent on strategic partnering or other sources of funding to do that because that consumes a lot of money," said McCreary, adding, "I still feel we have the potential to get strategic partnering done between now and the end of the year."

Baffinland has not determined a budget for 2010 yet, but that could change in the next three months if a partner is announced, he added.

The company has spent $420 million developing the project so far.