Advertisement.
The company trying to build a mine outside Whatì says the trade war between the United States and China has transformed the project, turning bismuth from a footnote into the main event.
Fortune Minerals told a technical session in Yellowknife last week that what was long pitched as a cobalt and gold project has effectively become a bismuth play.
“This is actually turning into a bismuth project with some gold and some other stuff [because] that’s where the market is,” said Rick Schryer, Fortune’s vice president of regulatory and environmental affairs, at a Wek’èezhìi Land and Water Board technical session on the company’s application to renew the mine’s water licence.
When the US imposed tariffs on China in early 2025, Beijing responded with export restrictions on bismuth and other metals. The price of bismuth shot from around $6 to $55 a pound within a day, Schryer said, and has since settled in the low-$20 range.
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
China controls roughly 80 percent of the world’s current bismuth supply. Fortune says the Nico deposit contains around 12 percent of all known global reserves of the metal, which has growing applications in electric vehicle magnets, semiconductors, and soldering for AI data centres.
Bismuth export restrictions imposed by China in February 2025 remain in place and were not part of a broader pause on some Chinese export controls agreed later in the year. Analysts have warned prices could spike again if diplomatic efforts stall.
Schryer said Fortune plans to produce 1,700 tonnes of bismuth per year alongside cobalt, gold and copper at the Nico site, with concentrates trucked to a refinery the company has acquired in Alberta. He said Fortune is also developing a partnership with Rio Tinto to process waste rich in bismuth and cobalt from the mining giant’s Kennecott copper mine in Utah.
The Canadian and US governments have provided more than $16 million to support work on the Nico project, and the territorial government has loaned Fortune $3.8 million toward the Alberta refinery site.
Advertisement.
Advertisement.
Knowledge, finance questions
The two-day technical session also saw the Tłı̨chǫ Government push Fortune to adopt cultural use criteria in its water licence – a regulatory tool that uses Indigenous knowledge to assess whether water quality is being protected.
Patty Ewaschuk, representing the Tłı̨chǫ Government, said Tłı̨chǫ staff and Elders had begun baseline monitoring of cultural use criteria at Lac de Gras – in the context of the Diavik diamond mine as it begins closure – and wanted to apply the same approach to the Marian River watershed downstream of Nico.
Schryer expressed caution, questioning how what he termed “subjective” measures would interact with licence compliance, but said he would consider the proposal further.
Ewaschuk also pressed Fortune on its financial capacity to build the mine. Schryer said a feasibility study will be completed in July and the company expects to seek financing after that. Mine construction is estimated to take two years while the Alberta facility will need 18 months to be up and running.
Fortune is also seeking federal Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund cash to build an access road to the mine from the Tłı̨chǫ Highway that connects Whatì to the wider NWT road network.
On the length of the new water licence, Fortune asked for a 25-year term covering the full life of the mine.
The Tłı̨chǫ Government floated a compromise: a longer licence paired with periodic check-ins to assess whether conditions remain appropriate. Schryer said he liked that idea.
Fortune expects a final investment decision by the end of 2026.
