Small Canadian miners in pole position for electric vehicle battery boon
Vancouver — Canadian developers of cobalt and lithium mines stand to benefit from a round of investments from the makers of electric vehicles and the batteries powering them, a potential game-changer for small miners short on money to develop deposits of these critical battery ingredients. Toronto-listed cobalt companies, Ecobalt Solutions and Fortune Minerals, are in talks, ranging from preliminary to more advanced, with more than a dozen groups, including car and battery makers, on financing their projects, their chief executives said. The interest in miners from downstream players along the battery supply chain — a new area of investment for most — would provide a life-line to miners at a time when equity funding for developers remains relatively tight after a five-year downturn on weak metals prices. "We anticipate additional transactions in the coming months and years. It is a function of demand-supply imbalance," said John Kanellitsas, president and vice-chairman of Lithium Am...
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