Moana Minerals

Cobalt-rich nodules in the Cook Islands seabed

PrivateFounded 2021

Moana Minerals Limited holds exploration licence 3 over ~23,630 km² of the Penrhyn Basin inside the Cook Islands exclusive economic zone, in more than 5,000 metres of water. It is wholly owned by Ocean Minerals, a Cayman Islands company with offices in Avarua and Houston.

The nodules there are not the same rock as those in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. They carry roughly twice the cobalt, far more rare earths, and much less nickel, because they grew directly out of seawater rather than from sediment.

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Overview

• The licence was granted by the Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority on 23 February 2022 for a five-year term, expiring 23 February 2027. A renewal application falls due around November 2026.
• The group is built as a set of single-purpose companies: the licence holder, a vessel owner, a United States services entity, a rare-earth sediment vehicle, and the company that holds a 6,000 metre remotely operated vehicle bought from Odyssey Marine in July 2023.
• It owns its own research ship, the 60 metre Anuanua Moana, rather than chartering, which is unusual for an explorer at this stage and let it run its own sampling campaigns.
• The resource is large and classified to a United States reporting standard: 417 million wet tonnes indicated and 102 million inferred, at a cut-off of 12.5 kg per square metre.
• There is no measured material and there are no reserves.
• Grades are 0.49% cobalt, 15.6% manganese, 0.27% nickel and 0.15% copper. The cobalt is the draw.
• Rare earths average 2,336 parts per million across 112 samples, with cerium the bulk of it, alongside 245 parts per million of molybdenum.
• The manganese to iron ratio averages 0.83, which marks these as hydrogenetic nodules, grown from seawater, rather than the diagenetic nodules that dominate the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. Almost all of them sit on the surface rather than buried.
• A pre-feasibility study is targeted for the second half of 2026, and an environmental and social impact assessment is under way.

The licence

The company says it holds an option over up to a further 48,000 km². The resource estimate was prepared by an independent consultancy to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s mining disclosure standard, which is a stricter basis than most seabed explorers publish on, and it reaches the public because the parent’s part-owner is being acquired by a listed company.

Ownership

Moana Minerals is wholly owned by Ocean Minerals. That parent’s own register is disclosed in the filings for the pending Odyssey Marine transaction, at 30 April 2026, valuing the parent at ~US$100 million.

The filed table does not foot exactly, so only the two largest rows above should be relied on without qualification. Everything here is a snapshot of a register that is being restructured by a transaction that has not closed.

Listed exposure

There is no ticker for this company or its parent, and the only listed route in is remote. Odyssey Marine Exploration, on Nasdaq, holds a small direct stake in the parent and is the acquirer in the pending merger with American Ocean Minerals, which is itself the largest holder of the parent. So exposure runs through two layers and depends on a transaction that remains preliminary and unclosed. The terms are on the American Ocean Minerals profile.

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