25 April 2017
LONDON, ON, April 25, 2017 /CNW/ - Fortune Minerals Limited (TSX: FT) (OTCQX: FTMDF) ("Fortune" or the "Company") (www.fortuneminerals.com) announces that Hatch Ltd. ("Hatch") and Micon International Limited ("Micon") have been engaged to update the Feasibility Study for the NICO Cobalt-Gold-Bismuth-Copper Project. Hatch has also been retained to conduct additional engineering work. The vertically integrated NICO Project consists of a planned mine and concentrator in the Northwest Territories and refinery near Saskatoon where concentrates from the mine will be processed to battery grade cobalt sulphate, gold, bismuth metal and oxide, and copper. NICO has already been assessed in a positive Feasibility Study in 2014 but requires an update to reflect current costs, commodity prices and currency exchange rates to support efforts to arrange project financing in progress. The Feasibility Study update is expected to be completed in early summer. Fortune is working with PricewaterhouseCoopers Corporate Finance Inc. ("PwC") to arrange the project financing.
NICO is a primary cobalt deposit with more than 50% of projected revenues at current commodity prices coming from cobalt, now quoted at more than US$26 per pound for metal cathodes. The cobalt market has transitioned into a supply deficit and demand is accelerating primarily due to consumption in lithium-ion batteries used in portable electronic devices, electric vehicles ("EV's") and stationary storage cells used to store energy from the electrical grid. The NICO deposit co-products include more than 1.1 million ounces of gold as well as 12% of global bismuth reserves.