Fortune Minerals Ltd. reported Dec. 4 the startup of a $3.8 million pilot plant last month at SGS Lakefield Research Limited in Ontario for its Nico cobalt-gold-bismuth deposit in the Northwest Territories.

Fortune aims to confirm the economic feasibility of producing precious and base metals from NICO. A total of 180 metric tons of ore mined from the Nico deposit during the 2006 and 2007 under...