Avalon Advanced Materials has found a global financing partner from India to help build a $500-million lithium refinery in Thunder Bay.
After its first development partner backed out, Avalon, a Toronto-based junior miner, announced April 4 that it's signed a binding letter of intent with RenJoules International, a subsidiary of the Essar Group.
Essar will become a strategic partner and a co-developer to financially back Avalon's plans to construct a regional processing facility to handle the concentrate from its Kenora-area deposit and other lithium exploration companies in northwestern Ontario.
In a news release, Avalon said it expects construction to begin this year at a yet-to-be-named site in Thunder Bay, which the company said it is finalizing. Tentatively, the plant will go into operation in 2025.
Plans for a plant were first announced in late 2020.
The Mumbai-based Essar Group is best known in Northern Ontario for being the one-time owners of Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie. It's a diversified privately owned international entity with interests in energy, logistics, metals and mining and financing.
Avalon Advanced Materials has found a global financing partner from India to help build a $500-million lithium refinery in Thunder Bay.
After its first development partner backed out, Avalon, a Toronto-based junior miner, announced April 4 that it's signed a binding letter of intent with RenJoules International, a subsidiary of the Essar Group.
Essar will become a strategic partner and a co-developer to financially back Avalon's plans to construct a regional processing facility to handle the concentrate from its Kenora-area deposit and other lithium exploration companies in northwestern Ontario.
In a news release, Avalon said it expects construction to begin this year at a yet-to-be-named site in Thunder Bay, which the company said it is finalizing. Tentatively, the plant will go into operation in 2025.
Based on anticipated demand for lithium and the growing electric vehicle market, Avalon expects the initial production capacity for the refinery to be 20,000 tonnes per year of processed lithium hydroxide and/or lithium carbonate.
Lithium is predominately used in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles (EV).
Avalon said in the release that it expects to tap into various government funding programs to source funds to build the refinery and Indigenous businesses in Northern Ontario. It's an opportunity for the provincial government to make good on the commitments in its recently announced Critical Minerals Strategy.
This proposed refinery will operate under a separate business line called Avalon Lithium Inc. of which Essar will become a co-owner.
It will be set up to act as a toll processing operation, not only handling lithium concentrates from Avalon's deposit at Separation Rapids, north of Kenora, but other "aspiring" potential lithium producers in northwestern Ontario.