Recently I wrote here on seeking Alpha about the Cobalt Miners set to boom, you can read about it here. There I discussed the cobalt supply/demand equation, the importance of cobalt where 49% is used in lithium ion batteries.
With 12 lithium ion battery "mega factories" set to come on line by 2020 according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence (and 7 of those in China), owning more of the supply chain (cobalt) makes a great deal of strategic sense.
Previously I discussed the major cobalt miners such as Freeport McMoRan (NYSE:FCX), Glencore (OTC:OTC:GLNCF) (LSX:GLEN), Umicore SA (UMI), Sumitomo Heavy Industries (TYO:6302), Sherritt International (OTCPK:SHERF)(TSX), MMC Norilsk Nickel (OTCPK:NILSY) (LSX:MNOD, and Vale S.A. (NYSE:VALE). I touched on the junior cobalt miners briefly, but here I will take an in depth look at a high risk/high return junior.
Fortune Minerals Ltd (OTCQX:FTMDF) (TSX:FT) - Price = CAD 0.10
Fortune Minerals was incorporated on August 2, 1988. The Canadian company is a natural resource company. It has interests in several mineral deposits and exploration projects in northern Canada.
The Company is focused on developing it's vertically integrated NICO gold-cobalt-bismuth-copper. The NICO resource was an in house discovery. An extension to this project is their Sue-Dianne silver-copper-gold deposit located nearby.
Fortune also has a buy a 10 year re-purchase option for the Arctos Anthracite coal project in northwest British Columbia, which they previously sold.
I came across Fortune Minerals when researching my Seeking Alpha article; "Cobalt miners set to boom". The article discussed an expected shortage of cobalt supply going forward, and a large increase in demand coming from the electric vehicle batteries led by Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) in the US. Fortune is one of very few North American miners set to benefit from this. The other is Formation Metals (OTCQB:FMETF) (TSX:FCO).