Canadian Government makes joint $10 million Investment in Cobalt Refinery

Fuse Cobalt Inc. of Vancouver has announced that the government of Canada and the government of Ontario announced a joint $10-million investment in the First Cobalt Corp. refinery in Cobalt, ON. The refinery is located approximately 1500 m west of Fuse Cobalt’s cobalt mineral exploration property and inside the historic silver-cobalt producing region of Ontario.

Furthermore, First Cobalt also finalized a new supply arrangement with Glencore plc along with a tentative pact with a unit of China Molybdenum Co. Ltd., in which First Cobalt will receive 4,500 tonnes of cobalt hydroxide per year from the Democratic Republic of the Congo for use in its northern Ontario refinery beginning in 2022. This supply contract is significant for the region, the company says, because it will assist the refinery to become fully operational, and once completed, it will be North America’s only producer of cobalt sulfate for the electric vehicle (EV) market.

The $10 million investment will help accelerate the commissioning and expansion of the facility. The refinery is a hydrometallurgical cobalt refinery that was permitted in 1996 with a nominal throughput of 12 tonnes per day and operated intermittently until 2015, producing cobalt, nickel, and silver products.

In May 2020, the company completed an engineering study that confirmed the refinery’s suitability to treat cobalt hydroxide at an expanded throughput of 55 tonnes per day to produce a high-purity, battery grade cobalt sulphate. Today, approximately 80 per cent of global supply comes from China and there is no production in North America.

Fuse Cobalt’s focus is on exploration for high value metals required for the manufacturing of batteries.

Glencore is an Anglo-Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company with headquarters in Baar, Switzerland.

China Molybdenum is the largest molybdenum producer in Mainland China.