Nearly a half-mile under the earth in northern Minnesota, an exploratory drill found something surprising: Minerals with the highest concentration of nickel yet identified by mining company Talon Metals, as well as copper, gold and platinum group metals.
The company, which seeks to supply nickel to Tesla for electric vehicle batteries, announced May 1 that it found minerals with 12.65% nickel — compared to an average of 1.73% that the company previously reported. The find was made in an existing hole the company extended last year near Tamarack, Minn., with the minerals starting at 2,320 feet deep.
The dig was part of Talon’s accelerating exploration program, which has drilled or extended at least 292 holes from 2020 to 2024, according to the Department of Natural Resources website and agency records. That’s four times as many samples taken by Talon’s mine partner, a subsidiary of the international mining giant Rio Tinto, as in the preceding five years.
The sample “would be exciting if it was only the gold values, or the [platinum group] values, or the copper values, or the nickel values, but to have all of them together makes this intercept exceptional,” Brian Goldner, chief exploration and operating officer at Talon, said in a statement.
Talon’s proposed mine has not encountered the same pushback as the two other proposed hardrock mines in Minnesota, NorthMet and Twin Metals. The project would be in a part of Minnesota with little history of mining, and also faces the challenge of finding higher-grade minerals in a much more concentrated area.
Talon is in the process of completing a feasibility study this year that will inform how and where it mines for metals across the Tamarack Intrusion, an underground collection of sulfide rock formed over a billion years ago. The company is in the beginning stages of environmental permitting with the state, proposing an underground mine that would ship ore to North Dakota for processing.
But mapping out the underground resource, which is concentrated in smaller areas than other copper-nickel prospects in Minnesota, takes significant work. Talon has an in-house drilling team, and spent $65 million on the effort from 2020 to 2024, according to a company spokeswoman.
All that drilling has attracted the attention of the environmental group WaterLegacy, which wants the state to complete an environmental review of this exploratory drilling.
