Located 220 kilometers northeast of Schefferville, and 125 kilometers west of the Voisey Bay Nickel-Copper-Cobalt Mine, Quest’s Strange Lake Property covers an area of 54,000 hectares in a frigid climate.

"We are in permafrost,” said Peter Cashin, president and chief executive officer at Quest. “There have to be additional engineering considerations for your equipment, your building sites and that tends to be a constraint.”

Continuously warmer climates are also playing into Quest’s plans to build and operate on the Strange Lake Property. "A big consideration that we have to take into account, are the effects of global warming,” Cashin said.

"The permafrost also limits the ground water percolation, it affects the drainage and surface erosion so it’s a very sensitive climate and you have to account for that in your design,” Cashin said.

The Strange Lake Property poses another challenge. The grueling winters nearly halve the window of opportunity for the company.

"The timeline of shipping and construction are very short, six months maximum. You miss that window and you miss valuable lower cost construction time so you have to be concerned about your scheduling,” Cashin said.

Despite the challenges of mining in northern Quebec, the Strange Lake Property offers the types of heavy rare earth elements that are in growing demand, especially in the U.S.

Cashin pointed to a U.S. report recognizing the importance of rare earths. He said the U.S. department of energy recently undertook a criticality matrix of determination of the Rare Earth Elements (REEs) – a requirement if they are to be leaders in the green energy, green technology environment.

These critical REEs are the exact types found in the Strange Lake Property. The property is rich in neodymium, dysprosium and terbium.

Strange Lake’s deposit holds 66% of those critical REEs needed to make cell phones, flat screens, hybrid automobiles, wind turbines etc. Cashin cited BMW as an example of a traditional company turning towards REEs.

"New statistics from BMW have shown a 20-fold increase in four years in REE inputs into their conventional automobiles,” Cashin said. “It’s gone from 0.1% input of REEs in automobiles in 2007 to 25% projected by 2020.”

At the moment, Quest is focusing on permitting and getting their studies in line as they work towards production in 2017. “We’ve just started our pilot mill studies,” Cashin said. “We’ve also shortened the timeline to feasibility and that should be delivered by 2013.

"We’ve traced mineralisation over 1.8 kilometers in strike length and we’ve defined mineralisation down to 350 meters vertical with values up to 30-32% REE, that’s high-value material,” Cashin said.