With a recent $15 million infusion in hand from the U.S. Department of Defense, Salmon, Idaho-based mining company Jervois Mining USA—a subsidiary of Australian mining company Jervois Global—will start exploratory drilling for cobalt on the Salmon-Challis National Forest next week.
This marks a major step-up in activity for the company, which wound down operations in late March amid falling cobalt prices.
In early October 2022—a time when cobalt prices were still roughly $40 per pound, according to S&P Global—Jervois Mining USA cut the ribbon on its Idaho Cobalt Operations facility, a 200-acre mining campus built on a plateau in the Salmon River Mountains.
The site, located about three miles east of the Frank-Church Wilderness, consists of a wastewater treatment plant, a mine tailings storage facility, several ore hauling roads, and a processing mill. Two portals to the west of the plateau lead to two tunnels that angle slightly upwards into the “Ram” cobalt deposit.
The “Ram” and adjacent “Sunshine” cobalt deposits belong to the Idaho Cobalt Belt, a 40-mile-long band of mineral deposits containing cobalt, copper, gold and other metals. The cobalt—present here at high enough concentrations to make it the belt’s primary metal—was deposited by underwater volcanos about 1.6 billion years ago on what used to be an ancient sea floor.
According to Jervois, the deposits sit on a reserve amounting to 4 million tons of ore with a cobalt concentration of 0.5%, which is higher than the average cobalt ore grade of 0.1%.
In late 2022, the company expected to see its first domestic cobalt ore shipment by early 2023. After that point, it hoped to produce some 16,890 tons of cobalt through 2031—enough to power up to 7 million electric vehicles.
What Jervois didn’t foresee was a global crash in cobalt prices. The company let go of 90% of its 300 employees in March and whittled down its staff to a core drill crew, geologists, and consultants, according to mine manager Matt Lengerich.
On March 28, Jervois announced that it was suspending operations due to historically low cobalt prices of just $15 per pound.
“All construction activity was halted, and we maintained a small fit-for-purpose crew on site,” Lengerich said. “We did our best to limit our impacts to the employees that were leaving, helping them as much as possible with outplacement services and moving onto a different role if that’s what they were interested in.
