Cobalt Town – Page 5 – Republic of Mining

First Cobalt Buys Idaho Explorer in Race to Supply Battery Boom – by Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – March 14, 2018)

March 15, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

First Cobalt Corp. is seeking to speed up its timetable to begin producing cobalt, riding the wave of interest in the metal used in electric-vehicle batteries and smartphones.

The Vancouver-based exploration company agreed to buy explorer US Cobalt Inc., which has properties in Idaho, in an all-stock deal with an implied equity value of about C$149.9 million ($116 million). Trading in the two companies’ shares was suspended.

“We’re trying to fast-track our way into North American mining and refining,” First Cobalt Chief Executive Officer Trent Mell said in an interview.

Commentary: Apple and the vertical transformation of mining – by Kurt Breede (Northern Miner – February 26, 2018)

March 1, 2018

The Northern Miner

Kurt Breede, P.Eng. is the Director of Industry Partnerships at the Lassonde Institute of Mining, University of Toronto, one of the leading mining research institutes in Canada. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Apple Inc. was in direct talks with an undisclosed mining company to secure long-term cobalt supplies to support the mounting demands of the company’s power hungry device lineup.

Cobalt, a hard, silver-grey metal once used for jewellery and paints, is the primary component for today’s lithium-ion batteries. Valued at over US$37 per lb. — an increase of 100% from just the year before — the metal is a coveted chalice for power hungry manufacturers seeking footholds in the ever narrowing space.

The potential deal would mark one of several negotiated by vertically integrated manufacturers (VIMs) in recent months to secure supplies of metals required to satisfy expanding production targets. BMW, Volkswagon and Samsung are just some of the industry giants rallying to align themselves with raw material producers.

Scarce, expensive cobalt essential for electric cars – by Terry Cain (Globe and Mail – February 27, 2018)

February 28, 2018

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The recent market turmoil has knocked back the value of most asset classes. But one group has held up surprisingly well. After rising dramatically in 2017, certain scarce metals, such as cobalt and lithium, continue to be hot commodities. In fact, the price of cobalt has set a new record high. So what is driving this rally, can it continue, and how can investors benefit?

The key factor driving these metals is surging demand for lithium-ion batteries. These power sources are the most popular kind of rechargeable batteries used in home electronics, as well as electric vehicles. Production and sales of these batteries have taken off as global sales for these products surge.

As the name indicates, one of the key ingredients in lithium-ion batteries is lithium. The price of the silvery-white metal, sometimes called “white gold,” has spiked by nearly 500 per cent over the past five years, though it has pulled back in the first part of this year. Australia and South America are the main lithium producers.

Pandering to electric-vehicle owners contains blind spots – by Konrad Yakabuski (Globe and Mail – February 28, 2018)

February 28, 2018

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Electric-vehicle sales more than doubled in Ontario in 2017 as rebates worth up to $14,000 per car propelled the province past Quebec to become Canada’s EV leader. Many electric-car fans celebrated this as proof that Ontario’s latest incentives to encourage EV sales are working.

Working for them, maybe. But what about for taxpayers and the planet? We already know that government rebates on EV purchases are a horrendously expensive way to reduce carbon. Encouraging consumers to move to smaller gasoline-powered cars by increasing sales taxes on fossil fuels would do so much more to cut emissions.

What’s more, it is now becoming clear that mining the massive amounts of cobalt and lithium needed to manufacture the bigger batteries required to increase EV range and reliability risks creating a slew of unintended social, economic and environmental consequences.

Agnico Eagle Is Reviewing Cobalt Assets After Receiving Interest – by Danielle Bochove and Susanne Barton (Bloomberg News – February 26, 2018)

February 27, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. is dusting off cobalt assets in Ontario for potential sale as a global search for the rechargeable-battery ingredient expands amid surging demand.

The gold producer is doing an analysis of its Canadian cobalt holdings after receiving five or six inquiries, Chief Executive Officer Sean Boyd said Monday in a Bloomberg TV interview at the annual BMO mining conference in Florida.

The move comes at a time when manufacturers are seeking to secure cobalt on behalf of battery makers as demand heats up from the electric-vehicle and mobile-phone industries.

Betting on DRC’s mineral boom – by Gregory Mthembu-Salter (The Africa Report – January 30, 2018)

January 30, 2018

http://www.theafricareport.com/

Kinshasa – Mineral commodity prices are ticking up once more, and the cash-strapped Congolese government is increasingly betting on rising mining revenues to come to its fiscal rescue. Because of the budget deficit and a shortage of foreign exchange, the central bank has been putting pressure on mining companies to repatriate 40% of their export earnings pursuant to a 2007 government decision.

That, and a proposed reform to the mining code, have caused tensions between the Kinshasa government and the country’s mining companies. On the production and price fronts, things are looking up now. Copper prices currently hover around $7,000/tn, sharply up from $4,500 just a year ago. And, improving matters further, the country’s recorded copper exports were 15% higher during the first half of 2017 than during the same period of 2016.

The cobalt price is rising too, buoyed by recent announcements by governments around the world, including the UK and China, of their plans to switch from petrol and diesel vehicles to electric cars. The London Metal Exchange cobalt price was $27/lb in October 2017, up from $13/lb a year earlier.

Laurentian University researchers put Cobalt camp under the microscope – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – January 25, 2018)

January 26, 2018

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

First Cobalt Mining conducting in-depth study of historic silver district

First Cobalt Mining, the biggest exploration player in the Cobalt camp, is bringing a Laurentian University researcher into the fold to better understand the geology of its properties in northeastern Ontario.

The Toronto company announced it’s embarking on a dedicated research partnership program with the university’s Mineral Exploration Research Centre (MERC) by sponsoring a post-doctoral position to carry out the first detailed study of major structural features in the 110-year-old history of the camp.

“We’re looking at it from a new set of eyes as researchers,” said Ross Sherlock, who oversees MERC’s Metal Earth project. “It’s an unusual geological assemblage.” MERC is the geoscience arm attached to Laurentian’s Harquail School of Earth Sciences, under the umbrella of the Goodman School of Mines.

Second life for historic Cobalt silver camp – by Karen McKinley (Northern Ontario Business – January 18, 2018)

January 19, 2018

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Historic mining area near Ontario/Quebec border garnering attention for cobalt resources

The land around the town of Cobalt, despite the name, was once one of the richest silver finds in the nation. Decades after that boom ceased, another one is on the horizon, this time for the town’s namesake.

As demand for electric vehicles grows across the world, one company is taking a second look at the cobalt resources that were once thrown away.

First Cobalt Corp. gave a Jan. 16 presentation in Sudbury on their latest findings and plans to drill on several properties they purchased near Cobalt, many of them historical silver mine sites, to determine the scope and quality of the cobalt resources.

Column: Why cobalt will struggle to free itself from the DRC – by Andy Home (Reuters – January 15, 2018)

January 15, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – The cobalt market will record a supply surplus both this year and next, according to heavyweight commodities research house CRU. This might seem a little surprising, given all the bullish hype surrounding a metal that more than doubled in price last year.

CRU itself has drastically revised its original assessment of a sustained supply shortfall due to strong demand growth from the battery sector. What has changed its mind?

In short, it’s the return of the Katanga mine after two years of suspended activities. Once fully operational, Katanga will be the “largest cobalt-producing mining project in the world”. (CRU Insight, Jan. 4 2018)

Cobalt: A Metal Poised to Peak (Startfor Worldview – January 8, 2018)

January 8, 2018

https://worldview.stratfor.com/

At Stratfor, we use geopolitics to understand the constraints and advantages that geography confers on a country and the political, technological and economic decisions it compels.

As the demand for electric vehicles increases over the coming decades, so, too, will the demand — and the price — for the raw materials required to produce them. Increased demand for elements such as lithium and cobalt will lead to potential supply bottlenecks over the next several years.

And while the media has touted the potential of lithium — the eponymous component of lithium-ion batteries — to be the raw material that powers the gradual transition away from fossil fuel-reliant transportation, it has understated the significance of one element in the equation: cobalt. Lithium-ion batteries require lithium, yes, but they also require something else. Under the constraints of present technology, that something is, more often than not, cobalt.

Miners Wager on a Charge in Demand for Canadian Cobalt – by David George-Cosh (Fox Business – January 1, 2018)

January 5, 2018

http://www.foxbusiness.com/

Dow Jones Newswires: TORONTO – A handful of Canadian miners are ramping up operations to mine cobalt, betting on demand for a socially responsible source of the metal that is in high demand as a key component of electric cars.

Most cobalt currently comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where supply is threatened by political, legal and labor issues. That means car makers and battery suppliers are increasingly looking elsewhere for the mineral.

Miners in Canada such as Vale SA, which has a cobalt-producing mine in Sudbury, Ontario, Sherritt International Corp., and smaller firms such as Royal Nickel Corp., First Cobalt Corp. and Fortune Minerals Ltd. are raising funds and engaging in exploratory drilling.

Ontario Northland: Through timber to tidewater – by John Thompson (Railway Age – December 28, 2017)

January 4, 2018

http://www.railwayage.com/

Some Railway Age readers will be surprised to learn that GO Transit, launched in 1967, was not the first venture of the Province of Ontario into the railway business; that event actually occurred some 60 years earlier. The honor actually belongs to the provincially owned Ontario Northland Railway, which links the city of North Bay, on Lake Nipissing, to Moosonee, on the salt waters of James Bay.

At that time, and until recent years, North Bay was on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) transcontinental (Montreal-Vancouver) main line. During the past decade, the trackage between a point just east of North Bay, to Smiths Falls (60 miles west of Montreal) was abandoned.

The territories served by the two provincial railways could hardly be more different: GO Transit is based in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, and carries commuters in business attire through an area of subdivisions, apartment towers, industries and fertile farmland.

Can the electric car industry bring this ghost town back to life? – by Sidney Stevens (Mother Nature Network – December 31, 2017)

January 2, 2018

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/

Like so many mining towns throughout North America, Cobalt, Ontario has seen better days. The silver rush that transformed the modest community, located 300 miles north of Toronto, into a vibrant boomtown during the early 1900s has long since died away.

Today, the sleepy hamlet — some call it a ghost town — still bears scars from those heady, get-rich-quick days. The borough, built atop a honeycomb of abandoned mining tunnels, is not only littered with waste rock and capped mine shafts but also plagued by poverty.

But its fortunes could soon reverse. Cobalt, population 1,100, is poised to flourish once more due to its rich stores of the metal cobalt. Ironically, the town known for its silver was actually named for this shiny, bluish-gray ore. At the time it was mostly ignored. But not anymore.

The 1903 Cobalt Silver Boom and its Extraordinary Economic Impact on Toronto and Ontario – by Douglas Baldwin (December 2017)

December 22, 2017

Douglas Baldwin is a retired history professor from Acadia University, Nova Scotia. This piece has been adapted from his new book, Cobalt: Canada’s Forgotten Silver Boom Town.

To order the book, click here: http://wmpub.ca/8094-SilverBoom.html

Speaking to the Empire Cub in Toronto in 1909, Rev. Canon Tucker told the story of a widely-travelled American who was asked where Toronto was. He thought for a moment, scratched his head and said, “Oh, yes, that is the place where you change cars for Cobalt.”

Although the value of the silver discovered in Cobalt far surpassed the riches uncovered during the Klondike rush only two decades earlier, few people today know of Cobalt’s history, or even of its existence.

Concentrated in an area less than thirteen square kilometres, about 400 kilometres north-east of Toronto near the Quebec border, Cobalt mines became the fourth-largest silver producer ever discovered.

When production peaked in 1911, Cobalt was providing roughly one-eighth of the world’s silver. During the First World War, the British government considered Canada’s silver supply so important to the war effort that it convinced Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden to use his influence to prevent a planned strike in the Cobalt mining camp.

Small Canadian miners in pole position for electric vehicle battery boon – by Nicole Mordant (Reuters U.S. – December 11, 2017)

December 11, 2017

https://www.reuters.com/

VANCOUVER (Reuters) – Canadian developers of cobalt and lithium mines stand to benefit from a round of investments from the makers of electric vehicles and the batteries powering them, a potential game-changer for small miners short on money to develop deposits of these critical battery ingredients.

Toronto-listed cobalt companies, Ecobalt Solutions and Fortune Minerals, are in talks, ranging from preliminary to more advanced, with more than a dozen groups, including car and battery makers, on financing their projects, their chief executives told Reuters.

The interest in miners from downstream players along the battery supply chain – a new area of investment for most – would provide a life-line to miners at time when equity funding for developers remains relatively tight after a five-year downturn on weak metals prices.