Talon buys nation’s only nickel mine to create Midwest ‘powerhouse’

By Hannah Northey
12/19/2025 01:28 PM EST

A core sample shows a band of shiny minerals containing copper, nickel and precious metals. | Steve Karnowski/AP

Mining companies are hoping to create a critical minerals hub in the water-rich Midwest.

Talon Metals, a Minnesota-based exploration company, announced late Thursday that it will purchase the nation’s only nickel mine — the Eagle mine in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — from Lundin Mining, as well as a nearby mill where nickel and copper ore from the mine are processed and eventually sold into the global market to make stainless steel and electric vehicle batteries.

As part of the deal, Lundin will have an almost 20 percent stake in Talon, a subsidiary of Talon Metals Corp., which is based in the British Virgin Islands.

The purchase is part of Talon’s broader effort to pump out more copper, nickel and other metals across the Great Lakes region and beyond as demand for metals and materials ramps up.

Talon Metals CEO Henri van Rooyen told POLITICO’s E&E News the transaction will help ensure the U.S. isn’t reliant on countries like Russia, Indonesia and China, which control almost 80 percent of the global market for nickel.

“It’s totally essential to make sure we have a U.S. supply of high-quality nickel,” said van Rooyen.

Jack Lundin, the president and CEO of Lundin Mining, said in a release that the combination of the two companies creates a “pure-play U.S. nickel company anchored by the Eagle Mine” and paves the way for the Humboldt Mill to become a “shared, centralized processing facility.”

Ben Steinberg, principal and chair of the Critical Infrastructure Practice at Venn Strategies, agreed. “If the Trump administration is looking for ‘mineral dominance,’ look no further,” he said. “We have a U.S. nickel powerhouse emerging.”

Talon is already exploring for minerals across Michigan with the help of a $20.6 million grant from the Department of Defense under a Cold War-era law that gives the president authority to shore up materials and services for national defense. Earlier this year, Talon said it had discovered a significant nickel and copper deposit dubbed “Boulderdash” 8 miles from the Eagle mine. The company has said ore at that site, if mined, could ship to the Humboldt mill.

The company is also pushing to build and operate the Tamarack high-grade nickel and copper mine, about 50 miles west of Duluth. The mine has an offtake agreement to supply Tesla with 165 million pounds of nickel and would ship ore to a processing facility in North Dakota. The project is a joint venture between Talon and Australian mining giant Rio Tinto. Ore from that mine is slated to go to Talon’s Beulah processing facility in North Dakota.

Van Rooyen said Talon hopes to have the Tamarack mine online by 2030 and hopes to extend the life of the Eagle mine beyond January 2026, when it was slated to close.

“We’d like to extend that by years,” he said. “It’s still a work in progress, but … the plan is to expand that for quite some time.”

Yet mining across the Great Lakes is hotly contested among tribes and environmental groups concerned about water quality, pollution and Indigenous rights. The Eagle mine as it was being constructed faced years of pushback from local groups, residents and some members of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community.

Talon’s plans in Tamarack have also drawn fir from the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, whose members fear the project could pollute the Mississippi and St. Croix river watersheds, sources of drinking water and critical fisheries.

The band did not immediately comment about Talon’s announcement.

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