Dunderland Iron Ore Company

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Dunderland Iron Ore Company building in Mo i Rana .

Dunderland Iron Ore Company Limited (founded April 15, 1902 in London, dissolved January 1, 1947) was an English mining company in Mo i Rana . It was founded to mine Norway's rich iron ore deposits in Dunderlandsdalen. The ore mining resulted in much innovation in the region. After three operating periods with a negative result, the company was sold to Norsk Jernverk .

history

Ore deposits in the region of Rana and Dunderland were transferred to Mostadmarkens Jernverk by the mining authority as early as 1799 . In 1873 the rights were at the request of Ole Tobias Olsen to Ørtfjell expanded. The Swedish consul Pehrsson, the owner of the ore mines of Sulitjelma and Alfred Hasselblom secured the rights to build a railway line and loading facilities on Ranfjorden in 1899 and initiated the subsequent collaboration with The Edison Ore Milling Syndicate , which had patented methods of iron extraction. Thomas Alva Edison had founded this company on June 22, 1898 in London to use his mining patents outside the United States and Canada . After two years of testing the production methods in New Jersey , the Dunderland Iron Ore Company (DIOC) was founded in 1902.

production

In the opencast mine in Ørtvatn (today Rana Gruber ) blocks weighing up to six tons were extracted and brought by rail to Storforshei , where these blocks were crushed by a 40 meter high stone crusher powered by a steam engine. The crushed raw ore with hematite and magnetite was in another plant with a vagina Bank separated. Then the ore was extracted with a magnetic treatment using the Edison technique and brought over the 30 kilometer long Dunderlandbane to Gullsmedvik outside Mo i Rana, where it was melted into iron briquettes in the '' Helvedes stekeovn ''. There was a steam powered power station and a loading dock on Ranfjorden. Around 1000 workers were involved in production.

The Edison technique was dry separation, later wet separation became common. The dry separation created a large plague of dust in Storforshei, so that the area was popularly known as Dust Valley ( Norwegian støvets dal ). This technology did not contain a recovery system, so it was only used between 1906 and 1908. Around 90,000 tons of briquettes were produced, then the plant was shut down.

With new capital from Alfred Krupp , a new period began for the plant in 1913. Under the director Claude Bannatyne (1913-1946) the company was named New Dunderland Iron Ore Company, Ltd.

Originally, the wet separation according to the method of Dr. Ulrich Method can be put into operation. However, preference was given to a Swedish process that was used in the new processing plant in Gullsmedvik. Due to the war and the uncertain supply situation for coal, the plant was not put into operation.

In the period from 1937 to 1939, 500,000 tons with an ore content of 67 percent were mined. The opening of the Rana Gruber in 1937 had a negative effect, British interested parties then took over the mine in 1938. The activities were controlled by a German administration during the Second World War . The company was taken over by the state in 1947 with an amount of 7.5 million crowns by Norsk Jernverk. Rana Gruber were only in operation from time to time. The German Wehrmacht confiscated the railway line during the war and integrated it into the Nordlandsbane . The Norwegian State Water and Energy Authority ( Norges vassdrags- og energidirektorat , abbreviated NVE, Vassdragsvesenet for short ) took over the power plant in Gullsmedvik.

literature

  • Alf Egil Berg: Dunderland Iron Ore Company Limited i Rana. Forspillet and first drift period . Ed .: Universitetet i Trondheim. 1995.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Electromagnetic processing and enrichment of magnetic iron ores in the United States of North America. In: Polytechnisches Journal . 291, 1894, pp. 113-116.