The all-season road linking the isolated community of Whati, in Northwest Territories (NWT), to the national highway system will open to the public on November 30, mining project developer Fortune Minerals has announced.

The road is also a key enabler for Fortune’s Nico cobalt project. After completion of the planned spur road to the mine, metal concentrates can be trucked to the railway at Enterprise or Hay River for delivery to Fortune’s planned refinery in southern Canada.

The Tlicho highway is a 97-km, two-lane gravel all-season road to Whati constructed by North Star Infrastructure under a 28-year, $400-million design-build-operate-maintain contract with the government of the NWT. The capital costs include up to C$53-million in federal government contributions through the Canada Infrastructure Fund.

Fortune plans to construct a 50 km spur road from Whati to the mine site, which was approved with the environmental assessment for the mine. The company has also completed an access agreement with the Tlicho government setting out the terms and conditions for construction of this road. With the Tlicho highway now in place, some previously planned facilities for the mine can be eliminated, reducing capital cost escalation and construction timelines and mitigating supply chain risks during construction.

The Nico project is a planned vertically integrated critical minerals development comprised of a mine and concentrator in the NWT and a hydrometallurgical refinery at a site expected to be located in Alberta or Saskatchewan, producing cobalt sulphate, gold, bismuth ingots and oxide, and copper cement.

The Nico project is one of the most advanced cobalt development assets outside of the Democratic Republic of Congo to meet the growing demand for lithium-ion batteries powering electric vehicles, portable electronics and stationary storage cells.

The metal assemblage of the 33.1-million-tonne Nico deposit includes primary cobalt, a 1.1-million-ounce in-situ gold co-product, 12% of global bismuth reserves, and copper as a minor by-product.