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    Fortune’s Nico cobalt-gold project: updated capex and logistics lens for mine planners

    June 6, 2026|

    Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

    Fortune’s Nico cobalt-gold project: updated capex and logistics lens for mine planners

    First reported on MINING.com

    30 Second Briefing

    Fortune Minerals plans to release an updated feasibility study next month for its Nico cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper project in Tłı̨chǫ territory, targeting 2027 construction on a 20-year mine producing about 8,780 t/y cobalt sulphate, 47,000 oz/y gold, 1,700 t/y bismuth products and 500 t/y copper cement. The 33.1 Mt reserve (0.11% Co, 1.03 g/t Au, 0.14% Bi, 0.04% Cu) previously carried a C$589 million capex, now estimated by the company at roughly C$1 billion, with concentrate trucked 400 km to rail at Enterprise then 1,000 km to an Alberta hydromet plant. Fortune has secured over C$17.5 million in non-dilutive funding, applied for up to $50 million for a 50-km spur road, and is leveraging bismuth supply risk after China’s export curbs pushed prices from about $7/lb to above $20/lb.

    Technical Brief

    • Concentrator design targets a low ~4% mass pull: 4,650 t/d ore into ~180 t/d concentrate.
    • Concentrate haulage chain runs ~400 km by truck to Enterprise railhead, then ~1,000 km by rail to Alberta.
    • About 2 km of underground development already exists from test mining, planned to provide early high‑grade feed.
    • Fortune estimates the Saskatchewan refinery zoning failure cost 5 years schedule and roughly C$5–10 million.
    • Nico mine site lies ~160 km northwest of Yellowknife and ~50 km beyond the current road end at Whatì.
    • Permits were recently secured for a 50 km spur road to site, now tied to a funding application of up to $50 million.
    • Non‑dilutive support totals over C$17.5 million, including US DoD US$6.38 million, C$8.21 million federal, and C$3.8 million Prosper NWT loan.
    • Bismuth market disruption saw prices spike from ~US$7/lb to >US$40/lb, now stabilising above US$20/lb.

    Our Take

    With Fortune Minerals already having demonstrated battery-grade cobalt sulphate from the NICO flowsheet in earlier test work, the current funding gap mainly affects scale-up and infrastructure (such as the 50 km spur road) rather than basic process viability, which can make the project more bankable to strategic offtakers in the cobalt and bismuth space.

    The jump in estimated initial capex from C$589 million in 2014 to around C$1 billion today, against a post-tax NPV of C$224 million at a 7% discount rate, suggests that updated economics will likely need to lean heavily on higher bismuth and cobalt price decks and/or additional government support to clear typical investment hurdle rates.

    In our database of 1205 Mining stories, there are relatively few Northwest Territories critical mineral projects with comparable reserve size to NICO’s 33.1 million tonnes, which means successful execution here would materially reshape the territory’s post-diamond mining profile and could become a reference case for future federal–territorial infrastructure co-funding in remote Canada.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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