Brownfield space in Thunder Bay’s north end is becoming a hot spot for the lithium industry.
Green Technology Metals said the former Cascades paper plant is its leading property to place a lithium hydroxide conversion facility, potentially the second such facility slated for the city.
In posting its “mine-to-chemical” strategy for northwestern Ontario this week, the company said it has a letter of intent for a 25-hectare industrial port site at 550 Shipyard Drive, the location of the former Cascades Fine Papers mill, also known as Superior Fine Papers, which was demolished in 2015.
It’s not far from where another regional lithium miner, Avalon Advanced Materials, wants to build its own lithium chemical refinery.
A lithium hydroxide conversion facility is a refinery that takes lithium concentrate, processed at the mine site, and converts it into a battery-grade material that the electric vehicle manufacturers are after.
Green Tech calls the Thunder Bay mill site a “contender,” along with a few other select sites that they’re eyeballing around the city, pending a thorough evaluation of the property from an environmental, permitting and community acceptance standpoint.
The company said they evaluated 56 brownfield sites in northwestern Ontario, focusing on heavy industrial zoned sites, before settling on this one.
Headquartered in Perth, the company has two main lithium deposits in northwestern Ontario that it’s eager to bring into production within this decade.
The Seymour Project, situated on the top end of Lake Nipigon, is the most advanced and is being touted as the company’s “Eastern Hub,” while its Root Project, northeast of Sioux Lookout, is dubbed the “Western Hub.”
Both deposits will provide feed for the Thunder Bay processing hub.
The company’s ‘timeline to production’ is to start mining at Seymour in 2025. Lithium processing is Thunder Bay is slated for 2028. Root tentatively could start production in 2029.
Both properties are actively being drilled off and explored to expand the lithium resources there and generate more feed for Thunder Bay.