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Noront Resources boosted its offer to buy fellow Canadian miner Freewest Resources Canada Monday, attempting to top a rival bid from U.S.-based Cliffs Natural Resources.

The offer -- two shares and one purchase warrant for every seven Freewest shares, or about $222 million, according to Noront -- heats up the battle for Freewest's chromite exploration assets in northern Ontario, which sit next to Noront exploration properties.

The warrants have a strike price of $4.

Freewest's shares were up 14 percent at 73 cents, but lagged the 86 cents per share implied value of the offer, which one analyst said was likely due to shareholders assigning little value to the warrant part of the bid.

"I think most people consider that free," said Michael Gray at Genuity Capital Markets.

Based on Noront's share price of $2.19 on Monday, the stock portion of the hostile offer was worth 63 cents a share.

"It's a good reaction. At the same time, I think the market's expecting Cliffs to come in and trump this," he said.

Noront originally made a $90 million all-stock bid in early October, which Freewest described at the time as opportunistic.

That was topped last week by Cliffs' friendly offer, which values Freewest at about $150 million, and would see Freewest's non-chromite assets spun off into a new publicly traded company.

Chromite is an essential raw material for the production of chromium, which is used in the production of stainless steel. Cliffs is North America's largest producer of iron ore pellets.

In a statement, Noront said its offer would allow Freewest shareholders to "participate in continuing value creation in the Ring of Fire," an exploration area west of James Bay in northern Ontario, where Noront and Freewest have been having exploration successes.

STAKING RUSH

Noront struck high grade nickel and copper in the area two years ago, sending its shares up 15-fold at the time and triggering a staking rush.

Since then, Noront has added to the original find with two chromite deposits. Just two weeks ago, its shares jumped more than 50 percent over two days after it unveiled additional nickel-rich drill results.

Freewest, meanwhile, has been defining what it calls a "potentially world-class caliber chromite district" at its Black Thor deposit near Noront's discoveries.

Analysts say adding Freewest would give Noront additional ammunition to justify the massive investments that will be needed to develop the deposits.

Noront said its latest offer will expire on Dec. 11 and will not be increased.

New York-listed Cliffs was up 0.5 percent at $44.28.

Cliffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.