BHP has made a sensational bid to snatch a high-grade nickel project in Canada from the clutches of Andrew Forrest in another sign of how determined it is to secure a future in battery metals.
The BHP bid for Noront Resources unveiled on Tuesday night trumps a takeover offer lobbed by Dr Forrest’s privately-owned Wyloo Metals in May.
How Dr Forrest will react to the BHP raising the takeover stakes by a substantial premium remains unclear, with Wyloo controlling about 37 per cent of Noront stock.
Dr Forrest and BHP are both targeting Noront’s highly-rated Eagle’s Nest nickel project that sits in the Ring of Fire, an emerging multi-metals region in the James Bay Lowlands of Northern Ontario where Noront has several assets.
BHP chief development officer Johan van Jaarsveld said the acquisition of Noront represented a “world-class growth option” in Canada, where the mining giant is also giving every indication that it intends to build the Jansen potash mine in Saskatchewan at a cost of up to $US5.7 billion ($7.4 billion).
For the rest of this article: https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/bhp-beats-forrest-in-takeover-battle-for-prized-nickel-project-20210727-p58di4