Missouri Cobalt, LLC was formed by J. Randall Waterfield, CEO of Waterfield Holdings and Stacy W. Hastie, CEO of Environmental Operations, Inc., in response to tremendous momentum in the high-performance battery market, driven by electric vehicle makers Tesla, BMW, Volkswagen, Panasonic and other industry leaders. These high-performance batteries require significant cobalt resources. The annual demand for cobalt reached $12 billion in 2019.

Advantage Capital provided $2M in NMTC financing to help the company with the environmental remediation of a Fredericktown, MO mine.

Missouri Cobalt began the environmental cleanup at its Fredericktown operation in early 2018. Between proven and inferred reserves, the Madison mine holds an estimated 72 million pounds of recoverable cobalt, likely making it the largest such reserve in North America. ;

The site also contains an estimated 105 million pounds of nickel and 103 million pounds of copper.

Environmental remediation at the Missouri Cobalt site employs 50 people. The new mining operation will eventually create more than 250 permanent local jobs, plus construction jobs. In total, the project will produce some 600-700 temporary and permanent jobs.