Refining cobalt in Cobalt, Ont.? That’s the plan for this northern Ontario

A former silver mining area in northern Ontario has been tapped to be the home of North America’s first battery-grade cobalt refinery. The nearby town — aptly named Cobalt — may finally be living up to its name. 

When completed, the facility will process mined cobalt rock — refining it into cobalt sulfate, an essential ingredient in lithium-ion batteries used in everything from electric vehicles and smartphones to fighter jets. 

Electra Battery Materials, the company behind the project, says the plant will be fully operational by the end of 2027 and could produce 6,500 tonnes of battery-grade cobalt — enough to supply about one million electric vehicle batteries per year. 

“Increasingly we need these critical minerals for our batteries and for our high-tech in order to function in modern society,” said the company’s founder and CEO Trent Mell. “So it’s not just the cars, it’s not just powering our grid with storage, it is also national security.”

WATCH | A closer look at the planned Cobalt refinery near Cobalt, Ont.:

How Canada will help secure North America’s cobalt supply chain

A $100-million facility, now under construction near Cobalt, Ont., will be North America’s first battery-grade cobalt refinery. For The National, CBC’s Lisa Xing takes a closer look at the Electra Battery Materials project and its potential to bring Canada into an industry dominated by China.

In the refinery’s lab, Graham Kinsman, Electra’s metallurgical lead, is busy tweaking chemical and physical processes to remove impurities like iron and copper from the cobalt.

“There’s a lot of specificity involved, so at each stage of the process we’re adjusting pHs, we’re addressing temperatures to make sure that we are efficiently removing the material that we need to remove,” he said. 

The final product is a very pure form of cobalt that stabilizes the batteries so they don’t overheat and helps them hold a charge for a longer period of time.

A long mining history

Despite the town of Cobalt’s name hinting at an abundance of it in the area, the plant won’t be sourcing mined rock locally — or even domestically. Instead, it will be imported from overseas.

The community got its name after cobalt was found during construction of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway in 1903. But more important at the time was the discovery of silver. 

The area immediately became the site of a major silver rush that lasted through the 1920s. At its height, it supplied 44 per cent of the world’s silver production, according to the Cobalt Mining Museum.