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US Strategic Metals (USSM) and Stillwater Critical Minerals (TSXV: PGE) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that includes lobbying collaboration to the US government, metallurgical and mineral processing development, offtake and logistics, and potential strategic financing.
Stillwater Critical Minerals is currently developing its flagship Stillwater West project, which is host to a nickel-PGE (platinum group elements)-copper-cobalt (plus gold) deposit situated in the Stillwater mining district of Montana.
USSM is planning to mine what it considers to be the largest cobalt reserve in North America. It holds an 18-year mineral supply of cobalt (plus nickel and copper) on a 7.3-square-kilometre site in Missouri, known as the Madison mine project.
USSM currently has an has an offtake relationship with Glencore (LON: GLEN), and in August was tapped by the Export-Import Bank of the United States for a loan package worth $400 million with a term of 15 years to support the development of its mining and metallurgical project.
The goal of USSM, said the company, is to build a large critical metal supply chain that provides reliable, traceable and conflict-free battery metals to the country.
“USSM aims to significantly expand production in the coming years and, as such, is successfully developing relationships with raw materials suppliers to allow it to meet rapidly growing critical metal demand,” CEO Stacy Hastie stated in a news release.
“Stillwater West fits this mandate extremely well, for its scale, grade and suite of critical minerals, nearly all of which the US is heavily reliant upon imports,” she said, adding that it is “one of the most important potential future sources of at least eight critical minerals”, and its development is “perfectly in line” with the US government’s mandate on securing domestic supply of these materials.
Stillwater Critical Minerals CEO Michael Rowley said the MOU has the potential to accelerate necessary engineering and metallurgical studies and follow-on to the company’s expanding base of government grant funding and partnerships with the US Geological Survey, Cornell University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for CO2 sequestration, hydrogen and hydrometallurgical studies.
“This MOU also reflects our broad alignment on ESG values and a shared vision for a large-scale, low-carbon American critical mineral supply chain based in an iconic and famously metal-rich US mining district that has produced critical minerals for over a century,” Rowley said.
