Fortune Minerals Limited (Fortune) is developing the vertically integrated NICO cobaltCobalt-gold-bismuth-copperCopper critical minerals project in Canada’s Northwest Territories (NICO ProjectNICO project). The principal objective is the productionProductions of cobalt sulphateCobalt sulphate heptahydrate destined for use in lithiumLithium-ion batteriesBattery. NICO has developed and tested a hydrometallurgical pathway to achieve this goal at the Lakefield Ontario laboratories of SGS Canada Inc. (SGS Lakefield). This paper describes that process as it was initially tested in 2012, summarizing the results of those tests and a subsequent validation pilot campaign in 2017 incorporating an improved option for manganese removal that produces a low sodium content crystallizationCrystallization feed.