The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Applies for US, Canada grants for Nico cobalt-bismuth project North of 60 Mining News - March 27, 2023
This copper-rich rock was discovered in a pit excavated to provide aggregate for road work on Fortune Minerals' Nico cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper project in Northwest Territories.
Fortune Minerals' Nico project hosts three of the 31 minerals and metals deemed critical to Canada.
Fortune Minerals Ltd. March 23 reported that it is in discussion with the Canadian, United States, and European Union governments to secure financial support for the development of the company's Nico cobalt-bismuth-copper-gold project in Canada's Northwest Territories.
Located about 150 road-kilometers (95 miles) north of the Canadian rail system at Hay River, NWT, Nico is a near-development stage project that includes an intriguing mix of critical and precious metals.
According to a 2020 development plan based on optimizations of a 2014 feasibility study, a mine at Nico and an associated refinery expected to be built in Alberta would produce an average of 1,800 metric tons of battery-grade cobalt sulfate, 1,700 metric tons of bismuth, 300 metric tons of copper, and 47,000 oz of gold annually over the first 14 years of mining.
The cobalt that would be produced at the vertically integrated Nico project is in high demand due to its use in lithium-ion batteries powering electric vehicles, storing renewable energy, and powering an untold number of electronic and household devices.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, roughly 70% of the world's cobalt comes from mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country known for being politically unstable and has come under global scrutiny for human rights and safety issues related to the mining of cobalt there. China controls more than half of the cobalt mined in DRC and currently accounts for roughly 76% of the global refined cobalt.
This creates a dilemma for companies that need cobalt for EV batteries. This is especially true for U.S. automakers since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which requires that the batteries going into EVs contain a certain percentage of materials produced in the U.S. or allied countries to be eligible for tax credits being offered to American EV buyers.
Nico also happens to be a globally significant deposit of bismuth, a critical mineral with unique physical and chemical properties that are used by the automotive industry for glass and anti-corrosion coatings, metallic paints and pigments, and abrasives for brakes and clutch pads. Bismuth also has a wide variety of metallurgical applications, such as an additive to improve the integrity of malleable cast iron and as a nontoxic replacement for lead in brass, free-machining steels, and solders.
Adding to the potential commercial uses of bismuth, U.S. Department of Energy national labs have made breakthroughs on powerful manganese-bismuth permanent magnets that could serve as an alternative to rare earth magnets in EV motors, wind turbines, military hardware, and other applications.
More than 10% of the world's bismuth reserves – deposits where it has been shown economic feasibility for recovering the metal – are found at Nico.
Much like cobalt, however, the production of bismuth is dominated by China, which accounted for roughly 80% of global production during 2022, according to the USGS.
China's dominance of minerals critical to EVs, green energy, high-tech, military hardware, and consumer goods goes beyond cobalt and bismuth, which is why the U.S., Canada, and EU are investing billion into securing reliable supplies of these increasingly important materials.
"The global demand for these minerals in the years to come will be enormous, and we're highly dependent on China," U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during recent testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee. "One of the goals of the IRA is to broadly strengthen supply chains for these critical minerals and their processing."
Canada, which is positioning itself as a reliable free-trade alternative to China, allotted C$3.8 billion (US$2.75 billion) of its 2022 budget to financial support for domestic production and processing of critical minerals.
Fortune currently has a grant application with Natural Resources Canada for pilot tests to support detailed engineering for its vertically integrated Nico project. Alberta Innovates has also indicated that it could support the bismuth component of this work.
Fortune has also applied to the U.S. Department of Defense for matching grants of up to US$25 million (C$34.5 million), primarily for detailed engineering, under the Defense Production Act Title III presidential directive in support of the North American battery materials production.
In addition to cobalt and bismuth, the Nico project would produce copper, a metal that is in high demand due to its increased use in EVs and renewable energy infrastructure, and gold, a precious metal that offers a built-in hedge against inflation.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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