The company plans to mine what it considers to be the largest cobalt reserve in North America. It holds an 18-year mineral supply of cobalt (plus nickel and copper) on a 7.3-square-kilometre site, known as the Madison mine project.

USSM is building a large critical metal supply chain, providing reliable, traceable and conflict-free battery metals to the US, CEO Stacy Hastie said in a news release.

“USSM aims to significantly expand production in the coming years and, as such, is successfully developing relationships with raw materials suppliers to allow it to meet rapidly growing critical metal demand,” Hastie said.

“Stillwater West fits this mandate extremely well, for its scale, grade and suite of critical minerals, nearly all of which the US is heavily reliant upon imports,” she said. “Stillwater West is one of the most important potential future sources of at least eight critical minerals and its development is perfectly in line with the US government’s mandate on securing domestic supply of these materials as well as USSM’s internal expansion mandates.”

Stillwater Critical Minerals CEO Michael Rowley said the MOU has the potential to accelerate necessary engineering and metallurgical studies and follow-on to the company’s expanding base of government grant funding and partnerships with the US Geological Survey, Cornell University, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for CO2 sequestration, hydrogen, and hydrometallurgical studies.

“This MOU also reflects our broad alignment on ESG values and a shared vision for a large-scale, low-carbon American critical mineral supply chain based in an iconic and famously metal-rich US mining district that has produced critical minerals for over a century,” Rowley said.