It looks like Fortune Minerals has found a place other than Saskatchewan for its mining refinery. President and CEO Robin Goad has stated last year that the company had been enticed by the province, the R.M. of Corman Park and the Saskatchewan Regional Economic Development Association to build the refinery near Saskatoon, but after years of going the the paperwork and passing the environmental assessment, new leadership at the R.M. voted the refinery down.

Fortune Minerals has announced an option agreement with JFSL engineering company to purchase its former steel fabrication plant in Lamont County, northeast of Edmonton. The refinery would service Fortune Mineral’s planned NICO Cobalt-Gold-Bismuth-Copper mine in the Northwest Territories. A news release from the company says one of the things the refinery would process is cobalt sulphate for the rapidly expanding lithium-ion rechargeable battery industry and their use in electric vehicles, portable electronic devices and storage cells.