A market deficit for cobalt is narrowing as the world’s leading producers of the prized metal expand production to meet the spike in demand for batteries used in electric vehicles.
Amid the surge in EV sales this year, hunger for cobalt drove major producers to announce plans to increase output at multiple mine sites in the Democratic Republic of Congo and balance the market.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
First Cobalt partners on Indigenous community initiative to assess long-term impacts of industrial contamination on wild plants
The Toronto mining company that’s overhauling a metals refinery outside the town of Cobalt has launched a unique environmental and community initiative with an area First Nation.
First Cobalt is working with Timiskaming First Nation on a two-year study to assess the historic impact of settlement, logging, mining and industrial processes on the ecosystem in the former Cobalt mining district.
Specifically, this tag-team study is examining the long-term impact on medicinal plants and mushrooms in this area of the Timiskaming region.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
First Cobalt seeks to bring manufacturing partner to northeastern Ontario for value-added processing
The company refurbishing a mothballed metals refinery near the town of Cobalt are discussing the idea of creating a Battery Park, catering to the supply chain needs of the North American electric vehicle industry.
Toronto’s First Cobalt wants to produce refined cobalt at the facility, along with a used battery recycling plant, but they’re also strategizing to produce nickel sulfate on the same site, five kilometres outside of town, within the next few years. Both nickel and cobalt are used in electric vehicle battery production.
For First Cobalt, this is a US$60-million expenditure to bring the former Yukon refinery back to life. The facility ran for about a decade – producing cobalt, nickel, copper, silver and other products – before being shuttered in 2015. First Cobalt acquired the shuttered building in 2017.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Battery Mineral Resources posts resource estimate of cobalt and silver deposit
Battery Mineral Resources (BMR) has come out of the shadows to post a first-time resource for a cobalt and silver property, southwest of Gowganda.
The low key Vancouver-based explorer, formerly known as Fusion Gold, released a maiden resource of more than a million pounds of cobalt at its McAra Project, according to an April 22 news release.
As the largest claims holder in the historic Gowganda-Cobalt silver mining camp, BMR thinks there’s enough mine potential among its nine exploration properties clustered in this area to consider establishing a processing plant.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Michael Insulan appointed by cobalt processor to advance offtake strategy
First Cobalt wants to hit the ground running by the time its refurbished northeastern Ontario refinery is fired up by the fall of 2022. The Toronto cobalt processor has appointed Michael Insulan as its vice-president, commercial.
Based in Europe, his strategic priority will be to key in on major battery suppliers, the automotive sector and all things to do with the lithium-ion battery supply chain sector.
Insulan has nearly 20 years of experience in oil and gas, bulk commodities, base and minor metals, working for Royal Dutch Shell, CRU, and Eurasian Resources Group. The last four years, he’s become known as an industry expert on cobalt.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Kuya Silver queues up exploration program to chase high-grade silver veins
A Toronto silver mine developer aims to return the shine to the historic Cobalt silver camp.
David Stein, president-CEO of Kuya Silver, believes a recently-acquired property in the Temiskaming area can be a “meaningful” silver producer within the next few years.
While the company’s main focus is on putting a dormant silver mine in Peru back into operation this year, Stein said its Silver Kings Project, just south of the town of Cobalt, figures prominently in their plans and can be the next mine in their rotation.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
A junior mining company with ambitious plans to be a Northern Ontario supplier of material for electric vehicle manufacturers said it’s a step closer to realizing those plans.
Toronto’s Canada Silver Cobalt Works announced last week that a first-stage pilot plant of its cobalt extraction technology will be built by SGS Canada at its metallurgical and analytical labs at Lakefield in southern Ontario.
The cobalt sulphate and refined material produced from their proprietary and environmentally friendly Re-20X process is used in the manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
The owners of a renovated cobalt refinery in northeastern Ontario have signed a supply agreement with Glencore to receive unprocessed cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by late 2022.
Toronto’s First Cobalt announced it has signed a five-year supply contract with Glencore AG to ship material from Kamoto Copper Company, its subsidiary in the DRC, starting in the fourth quarter of 2022. Glencore has helped finance First Cobalt’s plant-reopening plans.
A second supply agreement is in the works after First Cobalt inked a memorandum of understanding with IXM S.A., a subsidiary of China Molybdenum Co. (CMOC), to source cobalt from the Tenke Fungurume Mine in the DRC. The parties are working toward reaching a definitive contract.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
An anticipated surge of interest in electric vehicles and the revival of a cobalt refinery has lit a fire under Vancouver’s Fuse Cobalt to get back into the field in northeastern Ontario.
The rebranded junior miner is preparing for an active year on its exploration properties, northeast of the town of Cobalt.
The company, formerly known as LiCo Energy Metals, changed its name last year and took complete ownership of two properties after negotiating the termination of an option agreement with Surge Exploration.
FedNor and NOHFC investments to create more than 100 full-time jobs, improve Canada’s supply chain and reduce import dependency for electric vehicle battery production
The Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario are each investing $5 million in the First Cobalt Corporation to accelerate domestic production of battery-grade cobalt sulfate, a required element needed to produce long-range electric vehicles (EVs).
The announcement was made today by Terry Sheehan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Honourable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages and Minister responsible for FedNor and the Honourable Greg Rickford, Ontario’s Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines, and Minister of Indigenous Affairs.
As investor anticipation mounted for Tesla Inc.’s much-hyped, self-proclaimed Battery Day on Wednesday, Trent Mell was upset just thinking about it.
Mell, chief executive of Toronto-based First Cobalt Corp., has spent three years trying to secure a ground floor seat in the burgeoning electric vehicle industry.
In 2017, his company bought a long-forgotten refinery in small-town northern Ontario that could, if everything goes right, produce five per cent of the world’s battery grade cobalt, about 25,000 tons, by 2021. It would be the first, and only, refinery in North America producing battery-grade cobalt.
Canada’s First Cobalt, which owns North America’s only permitted cobalt refinery, is confident that cobalt will continue to play an essential role in batteries, despite Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicting a future with no graphite and no cobalt.
Responding to Musk’s comments at the Tesla Battery Day on Tuesday, First Cobalt president and CEO Trent Mell said that cobalt would not be taken out of batteries anytime soon.
“Despite years of trying to remove cobalt from batteries, it has proven to be a formidable challenge, owing to its importance in keeping batteries safe and extending the life of cells,” he said.
https://northernontario.ctvnews.ca/
TIMMINS — He’s a member of parliament, a musician and an author. Timmins-James Bay MP (NDP) Charlie Angus has written a new book–his eighth–and this time, it’s focussed on the town of Cobalt which he calls ‘the cradle of Canada’s mining industry.’
It’s not out yet, but he said he’s already signed a deal with a national publisher.
“We’re going to see this town play I think and an important role. (Cobalt) is a mineral that should not be the blood mineral and a mineral of such toxic environmental damage but a mineral that could actually lead us to a better and cleaner digital future,” said Angus.
An intimate sketch of the man [ Elihu James Davis] whose courage and faith created the T. and N. O., “the discovery railroad which opened Northern Ontario’s treasure chest”
THIS is the story of a man who proved by his foresight and his deeds that politicians do get things done, their traducers to the contrary. What is more, it proves that the smiling goddess, sometimes called Lady Luck, is cast in important roles in the fashioning of any young country, bestowing her favors on those who have the courage to set up new milestones of empire, no matter how the scoffers oppose.
As is the case with all pioneering achievement, it is a story of the faith that moves mountains, of dreams and vision and belief. It is the story of Elihu James Davis, the tanner of Newmarket, whose determination and courage brought into being the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway, hoping thereby to create a new agricultural empire, only to find that Dame Fortune had flung wide the portals to a Canadian Eldorado.
Not even Davis, in the days when the T. and N. O’s. right-of-way was still a figment of fancy, could dream of the riches that were to come. Here was to be a prosperous new farming region, with New Liskeard its market town. Colonists, hearing of the wealth of the soil, would come to join those who were opening up the country.
https://northernontario.ctvnews.ca/
TIMMINS — Historical remnants of Cobalt’s rich mining history continue to stand tall, and are none the worse for wear.
A hundred years ago, many prospectors came into being by chance in the north. Some of the first ones in Cobalt were building rail lines who caught glimpses of silver gleaming in lake rocks. Then they kept moving north, in search of gold.
Timmins Museum curator Karen Bachmann said many of them were engineers or mining men who understood the bush.
