Northern Ontario company gets provincial funding for lithium project

A Sudbury-based mining company hopes it can help help fill a gap in the market in years ahead for lithium needed for high quality batteries, including for electric vehicles. 

Frontier Lithium is developing a process to maximize lithium extraction — and is receiving more than $360,000 from the provincial government, to demonstrate its extraction process. 

"There's a growing global market for reliable, responsibly-sourced critical minerals, and we want Ontario to be the first jurisdiction on everybody's mind," said Greg Rickford, the minister of energy, northern development and mines, in a news release. 

'Greatly needed in the market'

Frontier Lithium is conducting it's pilot project in partnership with Glencore. Frontier's president and CEO Trevor Walker said the extraction method will be patent-protected, and will eventually be used at the company's high grade lithium deposit located 180 kilometers north of Red Lake, in northwestern Ontario. 

The area is known as Electric Avenue because of the size and quality of the metal resource, which is used in batteries.

The province said Frontier Lithium's project could lead to the establishment of a commercial-scale lithium chemical plant in northern Ontario, and with that, hundreds of jobs. However Walker said those possibilities are still several years away, as the project is still in the pre-feasibility study phase. 

"It's really hard to find high quality, high grade lithium assets like what we see on the Electric Avenue here in Ontario. It's really critical we do this right, we don't get ahead of ourselves and we manage expectations for all stakeholders including northern communities," Walker said. 

Walker said he hopes the pilot project will deliver high-quality lithium chemicals this summer. He said he expects a final feasibility studey to be complete around 2023 or 2024. 

"We believe that our timing is really good. We see quite a large supply deficit in lithium supply in around 2025 to 2028. So We believe that we're really on pace to make sure that we have the potential to step into the market when this product, high quality product, is greatly needed in the market," Walker said.