Sit down for a chat with Brett Richards, President and CEO of Midnight Sun Mining Corp (TSX: V.MMA, OTCQB: MDNGF, Forum), and it’s a little like talking to “the cat that ate the canary”. MMA is sitting on a very prospective copper project: the Solwezi licenses, in copper-rich Zambia, and it was the recent subject of a full-length Stockhouse feature.
But that is only a small part of the story here. The former holder of these licenses is First Quantum Minerals, the large-cap base metals producer that owns and operates the gigantic Kansanshi Copper Mine – just 15 kilometers away.
Given the robust copper intercepts that Midnight Sun has been producing in its exploration drilling, plenty of mining observers would strongly suspect that First Quantum would like to reacquire these two licenses. Fueling that speculation still further are the very significant cobalt readings that accompany many of these drilling intercepts.
As mining investors already know, cobalt has exploded onto the radar of the mining industry, for two important reasons:
- The rise of the lithium-ion battery and the electric vehicle market has been the catalyst for a huge jump in cobalt demand
- As an extremely “inelastic” metals market, it is especially difficult to increase the cobalt supply
These very bullish supply/demand fundamentals have led many mining analysts (and mining companies) to conclude that cobalt provides the strongest upward price pressure of any metals market today.
Stockhouse recently had the opportunity to catch up with CEO Richards, to get a clearer picture on Midnight Sun’s Solwezi Project and how the cobalt mineralization already identified here can impact the economics of a potential mining operation.
www.midnightsunmining.com
FULL DISCLOSURE: Midnight Sun Mining Corp. is a paid client of Stockhouse Publishing.