Japan is an important player in Alaska’s mining industry. In 2009, mining products accounted for about 14 percent of the US$981 million in commodities the Far North state shipped to the island nation. Japan is nearly 100 percent dependent on imported minerals.
Itochu Corp., an enormous and long-lived Japanese company, has agreed to invest as much as US$40 million to earn up to a 75 percent stake in Pure Nickel Inc.’s 750-square-kilometer, high-grade nickel-copper-platinum group element Man property south of the Alaska Range.
Japanese business leaders … have also showed keen interest in Alaska’s vast coal reserves.