Toronto-listed Fortune Minerals has secured a two-month extension to the option period to purchase the JFSL Field Services brownfield site, in 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 by paying C$15 000 a month to extend the option.
The JFSL site, a former steel fabrication plant, is in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland northeast of Edmonton, a consortium of five municipalities with the planning approvals already in place to attract heavy industry. Serviced shops and buildings are adjacent to the Canadian National Railway. It is also situated close to sources of reagents and a commutable pool of engineers and skilled chemical plant workers.
The Nico refinery will process metal concentrates from the planned Nico cobalt/gold/bismuth/copper mine and concentrator in the Northwest Territories, enabling Fortune to become a vertically integrated producer of cobalt sulphate needed to make the cathodes of lithium-ion batteries. The refinery will also produce bismuth ingots and oxide.
The mineral reserves for the Nico deposit also contain more than one-million ounces of gold, and copper as a minor by-product.