Fortune Minerals Limited (TSX: FT) has secured a two-month extension to the option period to purchase the JFSL Field Services ULC (JFSL) brownfield site in Lamont County, Alberta where it plans to construct the NICO hydrometallurgical refinery.
Fortune can acquire the JFSL site and facilities for C$5.5 million before the end of September 2022 by paying C$15,000 per month to extend the option.
The NICO refinery would process metal concentrates from the planned NICO cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper mine and concentrator in the Northwest Territories (NWT) enabling Fortune to become a vertically integrated producer of cobalt sulphate needed to make the cathodes of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles, portable electronics and stationary storage cells.
The refinery would also produce bismuth ingots and oxide, an ‘Eco-metal’ used in the automotive and pharmaceutical industries with growing demand as an environmentally safe and non-toxic replacement for lead in free-machining steels and aluminum, lead-free brasses and solders for the plumbing and electronics industries, ceramic glazes, radiation shielding, glass, plugs for decommissioned oil and gas wells, ammunition, and fishing weights.
The Mineral Reserves for the NICO deposit in the NWT also contain more than one million ounces of gold, and copper as a minor by-product. The vertically integrated NICO Project is an advanced development stage Critical Minerals development asset that has already received environmental assessment approval and the major mine permits for the facilities in the NWT. The project has also been assessed in positive feasibility and front-end engineering and design (“FEED”) studies that will be updated to reflect the new refinery site.
Fortune is a Canadian mining company focused on developing the NICO cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper Critical Minerals project in the NWT and Alberta. Fortune also owns the satellite Sue-Dianne copper-silver-gold deposit located 25 km north of the NICO Deposit and is a potential future source of incremental mill feed to extend the life of the NICO mill and concentrator.
For further information please visit: https://www.fortuneminerals.com/
