Canada Silver Cobalt Works contracts SGS Canada to scale up testing of metals extraction expertise
A junior mining firm with formidable plans to be a Northern Ontario provider of fabric for electrical automobile producers stated it is a step nearer to realizing these plans.
Toronto’s Canada Silver Cobalt Works introduced final week {that a} first-stage pilot plant of its cobalt extraction expertise will probably be constructed by SGS Canada at its metallurgical and analytical labs at Lakefield in southern Ontario.
The cobalt sulphate and refined materials produced from their proprietary and environmentally pleasant Re-20X course of is used within the manufacturing of batteries for electrical automobiles.
Canada Silver Cobalt Works desires to be a miner, processor and provider of a “extremely sought-after” premium and ethically sourced silver, cobalt and different battery-grade materials for the North American electrical automobile market.
Want to read more stories about business in the North? Subscribe to our newsletter.
The feed materials for testing will come from a mix of fabric pulled from the corporate’s Citadel Mine property close to Gowganda, high-grade silver found within the tailings, from its different exploration properties, and from recycled batteries.
The corporate sees their Re-20X expertise as giving them a strategic benefit in interesting to electrical automobile makers by offering a closed-loop provide chain the place ore is sourced from Canadian properties and would comply with stringent federal environmental requirements.
The corporate stated this pilot plant will “speed up the manufacturing of client-specific battery metals” for this market. Citadel Silver Cobalt has been working with SGS Canada on this expertise for just a few years.
In 2018, SGS was in a position to get better 99 per cent of the cobalt and 81 per cent of the nickel from a batch of concentrates whereas eradicating 99 per cent of the arsenic, a persistent subject from ore discovered on this mining camp. The concentrates graded 9.25 per cent cobalt, 5.65 per cent nickel, 49.9 per cent arsenic and 9,250 grams per tonne of silver.
The corporate stated the 22.6 per cent cobalt sulphate compound that got here out of this earlier testing exceeded the specs required by battery producers at the moment.
“Again within the day, within the Cobalt Camp, the strategy was easy; they adopted the high-grade silver veins and discarded all the opposite materials which was in truth battery metals that graded over 10 p.c cobalt equal in base metals,” stated firm CEO and director Frank Basa in an announcement.
“The economics of harvesting each the bottom metals and silver, then including worth by processing it into premium EV battery metals will present the corporate with two stable revenue streams and we’re excited for the long run because the high-grade and expertise chief in Canada’s Silver Cobalt heartland.”
In preparation to ultimately home Re-2OX processing expertise, the corporate bought the former Polymet Labs within the city of Cobalt in 2020, renaming it Temiskaming Testing Laboratories. To run the lab, they’ve employed business analytical lab operators, ONSite Labs, to get the power totally operational and open for enterprise by this summer time.
“Including ONSite is a large plus and turn-around instances ought to be a lot shorter than what we’ve been experiencing,” stated Basa.
“The important thing right here is that though they are going to be working in TTL, they are going to be unbiased which permits us to make use of their providers in an arms-length relationship.”
Again within the discipline, the corporate has a 50,000-metre drill program underway inside the previous Citadel Mine on its 78-square property, situated simply northeast of the city of Gowganda and about 30 kilometres south of Alamos Golds’ Younger-Davidson Mine in Matachewan. The corporate has plans to put in an entry ramp someday this yr.
Final Could, the first-ever resource estimate for the property was posted, displaying 7.56 million ounces of very high-grade silver within the inferred assets. The corporate stated they’ve simply scratched the floor in exploration and that this present discovery stays open in all instructions.
Apart from silver and cobalt, the corporate stated the Citadel property additionally reveals sturdy exploration upside for nickel, gold and copper.
