Letter: Mining, exploration looks good in Northern Ontario – by Gino Chitaroni (Sudbury Star – June 1, 2022)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Gino Chitaroni is president of the Northern Prospectors Association.

Between the Ontario Geological Survey’s Recommendations of Exploration focus on battery and green metals and the Ontario government’s announcement of its Critical Minerals Strategy, companies are now ramping up their efforts looking for lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, rare earths and so on.

However, many of these companies have already been active in the green metals space for the past few years. The push by federal and provincial governments in recent budgets should provide even larger exploration interest in Ontario.

In particular, high prices for green battery metals like nickel at $12.60 a pound, cobalt ($33.75), zinc ($1.70), copper ($4.30) and palladium at $2,015 an ounce, all in US currency. There are some notable Ontario-based exploration projects like Noble’s nickel and rare earth projects and Canada Nickel Company’s in the Timmins area. Nearly every nickel project is also being investigated for cobalt and PGE metals.

Canada Silver Cobalt Works and Battery Mineral Resources in Gowganda are focused on silver/cobalt. In the Cobalt Mining Camp: Electra Battery Materials’ development of a battery metals production facility bodes well for the region, along with Kuya Silver’s Silver cobalt exploration work nearby.

For the rest of this column: https://www.thesudburystar.com/opinion/letters/letter-mining-exploration-looks-good-in-northern-ontario