Jervois Mining takes over Canada's Ecobalt, shares jump

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australian cobalt developer Jervois Mining <JRV.AX> will take over eCobalt Solutions <ECS.TO> after shareholders of the Canadian company voted in favor of the deal, Jervois said on Monday.

Jervois will acquire eCobalt in a plan of arrangement that values the deal at C$57.6 million ($44.1 million), and will become the owner of the Idaho Cobalt Project, North America's major cobalt project.

Shares in Jervois climbed as much as 21 percent on Monday to $A0.23. Jervois announced the proposed takeover in April.

The battery minerals developer has been on a buying spree to build itself into a supplier of materials outside of China, which dominates the electric vehicle supply chain. It closed a deal to buy M2 Cobalt Corp, which has operations in Uganda, in June.

Prices for cobalt, a key material used in electric vehicle batteries, have collapsed by 70 percent to around $28,000 a ton over the past year due to a rising tide of supply from the Democratic Republic of Congo. [CCBD3]

However, concerns of unsafe work practices and child labor in the Congo have burnished the allure of sources of the raw material from elsewhere.

(Reporting by Melanie Burton; editing by Richard Pullin)