Company aims to make Temiskaming Shores a battery materials hub

As demand for electric vehicles is expected to grow in the coming years, Temiskaming Shores could become the site of North America's first "battery materials park."

Electra Battery Materials Corporation, formerly known as First Cobalt, has invested around $100 million so far to expand an existing refinery to process many of the base materials necessary for the lithium ion batteries that power everything from cell phones to electric vehicles.

Trent Mell, the company's CEO, said once the facility is fully operational, it could employ more than 200 people.

Mell said they plan to expand the refinery in several phases. Each expansion would help supply battery manufacturers in a different way.

The first phase, he said, is to refine cobalt, which is currently used in lithium ion batteries to ensure they don't overheat. Mell said the company is aiming to have that component ready by late 2022.

In 2023, they plan to expand into recycling the metals that make up batteries. After they remove the plastics from a battery they shred the metals and separate them.

"Everything else gets crushed into a powder," Mell said.

"We call it a black mass. Not a great name, but it's a black powder. And so we take it into our plant, put it into a leach tank and we dissolve everything."

The metals are then separated with a solvent, and are returned to the supply chain.

The company's third phase would also be its largest project. Mell said they hope to refine battery-grade nickel sulfate in four to five years.

He said the project would be complementary to Vale and Glencore's nickel smelters in Sudbury, which produce nickel used for alloys like stainless steel.

Once Electra Battery Materials' facility is up and running, Mell said it could support the development of new mines in northern Ontario to supply the metals for their refinery.

"There are assets that have not been developed because the market hasn't been there to support them," he said.

Made in Ontario

And as Ontario plans to ramp up electric vehicle production, with a goal to produce 400,000 electric and hybrid cars by 2030, Mell said his company's projects could help bridge the province's mining and manufacturing sectors.

"I think what it does is it connects the north and the south," he said.

"The assembly jobs, the mining jobs. We're that in-between, we're that connection and so there is certainly a nice narrative, at least from the provincial perspective, that we're all kind of working together in an integrated supply chain."

In late 2020 the federal government, and the government of Ontario each invested $5 million in Electra Battery Materials (then still called First Cobalt) to help it recommission the existing refinery in Temiskaming Shores.

"They're saying the right things, and I believe they will deliver on the right things," said Vic Fedeli, the MPP for Nipissing and Ontario's Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade.

"They fully understand exactly what the battery supply chain is going to be."

Brendan Marshall, the Canadian Mining Association's vice-president of economic and northern affairs, said Canada should be producing the materials necessary for the growing electric vehicle battery market.

Marshall said China currently controls around 70 per cent of the market for battery materials.

"Canada is in possession of all of the requisite materials that go into a battery and we're a large scale, low carbon producer and some of those materials, including nickel and cobalt," he said.

A bargaining chip

Marshall added a strong mining sector for battery materials could help Canada at the bargaining table with the United States.

U.S. President Joe Biden has proposed a tax credit for electric vehicles made in his country. Canadian politicians at the federal and provincial levels have publicly opposed the plan, arguing it would jeopardize auto manufacturing jobs in Ontario.

But Marshall said if Canada were to produce and process more battery metals it would become a more important player in the sector, and would have more sway in talks with the U.S.

Kwasi Ampofo, the head of metals and mining with BloombergNEF, said American tax rebates could actually benefit companies like Electra Battery Materials.

"These subsidies will certainly drive demand," he said.

"In the grand scheme of things, once we see that North American demand increases it's also going to have an impact on Canada next door simply because there will be more demand for the nickel that Canada produces, for the cobalt that Canada produces and other metals that the electric vehicle industry needs."