Jervois Global’s subsidiary Jervois Mining USA receives US$15M from the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to continue developing its ICO project. 

Approved by the US Office of the Assistant Secretary for Industrial Base Policy (OASD(IBP)) in June 2023, funds from the DoD will be used to complete Jervois’ expansion drilling program for the ICO mine and compile a BFS for a planned cobalt refinery in the USA. The drilling program is set to increase the ICO’s cobalt resources and upgrade the historical mineral resources of the adjacent Sunrise deposit to current geological standards. The proposed refinery has a planned production capacity of 6ktpy cobalt sulphate.

This agreement follows Jervois's announcement in April 2023 to pause a BFS for the expansion of its Kokkola Refinery in Finland and redirect its focus on developing a cobalt refinery in the USA. The suspension of ICO’s final construction earlier this year due to inflationary impacts on construction costs and low cobalt prices is suggested to have also driven investment decisions from the USA government because it implied a delay in Jervois cobalt production and the country’s only primary cobalt mine. Initially, Jervois planned on refining its ICO Cu-Co concentrate at its São Miguel Paulista (SMP) nickel refinery in Brazil. However, the development of refining capacity in the USA is envisioned to strengthen the ICO supply chain, decrease its carbon footprint, and see the company receive a 10% operating cost credit via the stipulations of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

According to the U.S ASD(IBP), investing in domestic cobalt resources is an integral part of the DoD’s strategy to secure refined cobalt for its critical applications (superalloys and lithium-ion batteries) and is in support of the Biden administration's goal to strengthen internal supply chains for critical minerals and metals related to batteries. Overall, Jervois has the potential to become a significant supplier of refined cobalt chemicals on a global scale thanks to its cobalt refinery capacity in the USA and Europe, as well as the planned reopening of the SMP refinery in Brazil.