There’s no denying it – cobalt is back with a vengeance.
Gino Chitaroni is the president of the Northern Prospectors Association and of Polymet Labs, not to mention a lifelong resident of Cobalt, Ont. According to Chitaroni, cobalt is experiencing a surge of interest from the electrical vehicle business, which requires cobalt, lithium and nickel for their batteries. And the town of Cobalt is the epicentre of those metals in Canada.
“The veins that were mined here for silver also carry cobalt – and only rarely was it ever recovered or reported,” Chitaroni says. “Cobalt was more of a hindrance than it was a benefit for the silver miners.”
Chitaroni explains that there haven’t been any silver-cobalt mines operated in the Cobalt Mining Camp since 1995 to 1996. Not many people foresaw the high interest in cobalt two years ago when the metal was only a third of the price it is today. However, that changed in the span of six to 12 months. In early 2016, interest in cobalt increased – and it hasn’t abated since then.
“In 2016 and early 2017, most of the work done in the Cobalt Mining Camp was more about acquisition and staking. Only in the later half of 2017 did we start to see any exploration work on the ground, once companies got their projects financed,” Chitaroni says. Projects ranged from grassroots exploration, airborne geophysical surveys, geological mapping, region power stripping and now diamond drilling.
Companies operating in the region include Brixton Metals Corp., Power Americas Mineral Corp., Battery Minerals, Cobalt Power Group and First Cobalt Corp., which is the biggest company currently in the camp.
“[First Cobalt] is now on their second program of diamond drilling. They have a very large program outlined that they’re starting to get underway at the Keely-Frontier Mine,” Chitaroni says.
Brixton Metals is currently drilling, Power Americas is drilling on the western extremity of the Cobalt Mining Camp and Cobalt Power finished two programs of diamond drilling within the past year.
“Another company that did a lot of diamond drill exploration last fall was LiCo Energy Metals Inc.,” Chitaroni says, adding they did well on their Teledyne project north of the town of Cobalt.
Outside of the Cobalt Mining Camp, there is plenty of exploration going on as well. Activity is noted from the town of Temagami in northeastern Ontario over to the northern rim of the Sudbury Basin in the west, north up Highway 144 over east to Gowganda and Elk Lake right to the Quebec border.
“It’s a big, big area that’s being looked at for cobalt,” Chitaroni says.
In the future, Chitaroni hopes that, over the next five to 10 years, there will be at least one or two mining operations churning out anywhere from between 3,000 to 10,000 metric tons of cobalt metal per year out of the Cobalt region. He also anticipates sustained exploration in Cobalt for the next three to five years.
“The markets are a funny thing,” he muses. “Today it could be cobalt, tomorrow it’s lithium. We’re getting a good run here in the Cobalt Mining Camp for the first time in my lifetime, and hopefully we’ll benefit from it. It’s been a sleeping area for exploration for decades.”
