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DULUTH — Northern Minnesota mineral deposits containing copper, nickel and titanium are getting another look.
In a news release earlier this month, Vancouver, Canada-based Green Bridge Metals Corporation said it had entered into an agreement with mineral exploration company Encampment Minerals Inc. to acquire up to an 80% interest in four projects between Boulder Lake and Babbitt.
The company said it will begin its own exploratory drill program within a year to further existing findings.
“We are pleased to have secured a rare portfolio of assets with clear mineralization in an underexplored world-class region within the Duluth Complex of Minnesota,” David Suda, CEO of Green Bridge Metals, said in the release. “We plan to advance these underexplored properties by leveraging historical exploration data by drilling in the coming 12 months.”
Previous exploratory drillings have shown the Boulder sites, approximately 15 miles north of Duluth on the north side of the Boulder Lake Reservoir, and Titac, a few miles farther north than that, are known to contain iron-titanium-vanadium mineralization as well as signs of copper-nickel mineralization.
The Siphon-Wyman and Skibo sites southwest of Babbitt contain copper-nickel mineralization.
While iron ore mining has long been practiced in Minnesota, mining for non-ferrous minerals like copper, nickel and titanium has not been done before.
According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, exploratory drilling programs in the 1970s identified areas that could contain possible titanium oxide.
The four properties Green Bridge is eyeing are among the 13 bodies now known to contain ilmenite, an iron-titanium compound, that dot the western edge of the Duluth Complex, which formed when the Midcontinent Rift 1.1 billion years ago tried to pull North America apart, sending magma up and leaving behind deposits of copper, nickel and other metals.
Titanium is widely found but not widely mined. It has become increasingly more valuable as it’s used in metals to build submarines and ships, aircraft, spacecraft, automobile parts, prosthetics such as artificial hips, buildings and even sporting equipment. It is light, strong and corrosive-resistant.
But effectively processing ilmenite into a high-value titanium feedstock — separating titanium from all the other rocks — had long been a question.
In 2017, however, the Natural Resources Research Institute of the University of Minnesota Duluth announced it had successfully processed some 10 tons of ilmenite from the Longnose deposit just northeast of Hoyt Lakes using a two-step process — once mechanically and then using a hydro-metallurgical process where acids leach the minerals out of the rock — into 99.8% pure titanium dioxide.
While Green Bridge said it is “focused on acquiring ‘battery metal’ rich mineral assets and the development” of the Minnesota properties, any potential mining is likely years away and would likely face steep opposition over environmental concerns.
Several key permits for NewRange Copper Nickel’s NorthMet Project near Hoyt Lakes and Babbitt have been revoked or on hold, and the federal government placed a 20-year pause on mining on federal land within the same watershed as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, halting Twin Metals’ planned underground copper- nickel mine.
A third project, Talon Metals’ proposed underground nickel mine in Aiktin County, is in the early stages of environmental review.
