TSX-V-listed First Atlantic Nickel Corporation has been accepted as a member of the US Defence Industrial Base Consortium (DIBC).

The DIBC operates as a consortium-based contracting vehicle under the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy in the US, which manages key industrial base investment authorities.

This includes programmes funded under the Defence Production Act and the Defence Industrial Base Fund. These authorities enable the Department of War (DoW) to make direct investments designed to expand and sustain domestic industrial capacity, particularly where supply chains are fragile or overly dependent on foreign sources.

The DIBC aims to expand and diversify the defence industrial base, enable private-sector businesses to work in partnership with the US government, provide financing for key contractors, and give the US government access to commercial solutions for defence requirements.

Through these authorities, the DoW utilises various financing structures, including direct equity stakes, grants, offtake agreements at guaranteed price points, purchase commitments, loans, and loan guarantees, to catalyse domestic mineral production and processing.

The DoW recognises nickel as an essential mineral input to produce high-temperature aerospace alloys, stainless steel and chemicals for lithium-ion batteries. Nickel is the only battery metal listed among 13 defence-critical minerals in the DIBC’s first critical minerals request for proposals released in February.

First Atlantic’s Pipestone XL Awaruite nickel and cobalt project, in Central Newfoundland, Canada, addresses two sectors that are considered critical to the defence industrial base – strategic and critical materials and energy storage and batteries.

Awaruite is a high-grade magnetic nickel/iron/cobalt alloy mineral containing about 77% nickel and 1% cobalt. It is neither a sulphide nor an oxide nickel ore. It does not require smelting and can be processed at the mine site using magnetic separation and flotation to produce a 60% nickel concentrate.

DIBC values that the awaruite produced by Atlantic Nickel can bypass the midstream smelting bottleneck in North America. While the US has zero nickel smelters, two are in Canada but are subject to capacity limitations and technical constraints relating to penalty and deleterious elements.

First Atlantic continues to advance a Phase 2 drilling programme to define the large-scale 30-km-long target zone that is Pipestone.