Cash-strapped cobalt refinery in northern Ont. hopes to relaunch in the spring

Aya Dufour · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 12, 2025 5:49 AM EDT | Last Updated: 2 minutes ago

It's been a bumpy thrust for Northern Ontario's Electra Battery Materials, a institution acceptable to go the lone cobalt refinery successful North America. 

A hard fiscal concern forced a slowdown astatine the Temiskaming Shores works recently, with operation coming to a grinding halt successful 2023.  

Last twelvemonth the institution received $20-million from the U.S. Department of Defense arsenic portion of a nationalist information inaugural aiming to unafraid captious mineral proviso chains.

Still, much investors are needed to decorativeness gathering the facility. CEO Trent Mell is tentatively optimistic that the backing could travel unneurotic successful the adjacent fewer weeks contempt geopolitical shifts similar the U.S.-Canada commercialized war.

"We've got a strategical spouse consenting to enactment successful $20-million," said CEO Trent Mell. "We don't request much, we're talking $80-million and this thing's successful production." 

Mell declined to accidental if the backing bundle volition impact immoderate U.S.-based investors. 

He said his institution was receiving a batch of authorities enactment from Ontario and Canada. "We person a batch of allies that privation to spot america succeed."

Export prohibition connected earthy cobalt won't beryllium an issue: CEO

Once completed, Electra Battery Materials' refinery is acceptable to process earthy cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

That state precocious imposed a four-month export prohibition connected the material, but Mell doesn't deliberation that volition wounded his company. 

"We've seen this earlier successful the DRC. It's the largest shaper of mined cobalt successful the world. It's a mode for them to negociate prices and royalties… it usually gets resolved reasonably quickly," helium said. 

Prices for cobalt person been expanding steadily since the DRC imposed its export ban. 

"That's large for our Western proviso concatenation trying to physique successful a stronger commodity terms environment," said Mell. 

If the refinery re-opens successful the outpouring arsenic planned, that volition mean astir 150 caller jobs successful bluish Ontario. 

"That's a batch of contractors, from Sudbury to North Bay to Temiskaming Shores," said Mell. "It'll beryllium a determination push." 

Dozens were fto spell successful the autumn of 2023 erstwhile operation slowed down astatine the plant.