Cobalt resource being calculated for Bornite

Trilogy Metals Inc. May 3 said it has begun work to estimate a cobalt resource for its Bornite project in the Ambler Mining District of Northwest Alaska.

Cobalt, an important ingredient in the electrodes of rechargeable batteries, is on the U.S. Department of Interior's draft list of 35 minerals considered critical to the economic and national security of the United States.

In addition to the 2.7 billion pounds of copper in an open-pit resource averaging roughly 1 percent copper and 3.7 billion lb of copper in a deeper underground resource that averages about 2.9 percent copper, Bornite hosts a significant amount of cobalt.

"With the market interest in finding significant cobalt sources outside of the Congo – where child labor and worker exploitation have been highlighted by Amnesty International and others as problematic for the auto and electric battery Industries – defining a large, North American cobalt resource has become a priority for the company," said Trilogy Metals President and CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse. "With cobalt currently trading over US$40 per pound, we believe the cobalt potential at Bornite could be significant and is worth pursuing."

At a cut-off of 100 parts per million (0.01 percent), assays from Bornite range from 0.01 to 0.04 percent cobalt. Drilling has also encountered higher grade cobalt mineralization, such as 18.44 meters of 0.35 percent cobalt in RC-34; 36.85 meters of 0.1 percent cobalt in RC11-0187; and 6.79 meters of 0.42 percent cobalt in RC11-0184.

"It has become imperative that the United States secure its own sources of critical minerals," said Van Nieuwenhuyse. "We have known that cobalt occurs with copper mineralization at Bornite for some time. With the completion of our metallurgical work related to copper, we decided to put forth further effort to understand how the cobalt was distributed."

The initial metallurgical and geo-metallurgical work on in-pit and below-pit samples collected from Bornite found that cobalt is found primarily within cobaltiferous pyrite, cobaltite, and carrollite.

More than 80 percent of the cobalt is found in pyrite which preferentially reports to the copper tails.

"Now that we have established from our initial test work that approximately 80 to 90 percent of the cobalt reports to the copper tails as cobaltiferous pyrite, we will complete flotation test work to concentrate cobalt into a pyrite-rich flotation product that can be considered for further upgrading and recovery of cobalt metal at the Bornite site," said Van Nieuwenhuyse.

Geo-metallurgical and metallurgical studies are ongoing to better understand mineralogic distribution and metallurgical response.

Trilogy said preliminary results from these geo-metallurgical studies have provided enough understanding of cobalt mineralogy and distribution at Bornite to initiate a cobalt resource estimate for this high-grade copper deposit, which is expected to be complete by fall.

Trilogy Metals is also entering into a technical assistance agreement with the United States Geological Survey to research the distribution of critical elements in the carbonate-hosted Bornite copper deposit –particularly germanium, rhenium, gallium and cobalt – which enables the USGS to assess the potential for the United States' critical mineral resources.

–SHANE LASLEY