Sudbury centre gets $40M boost for net-zero

The federal government is contributing $40 million for a new Mining Innovation Commercialization Accelerator Network, Financial Post has learned.

The project, to be announced Tuesday, is intended to speed up the mining sector’s development of innovative and clean technology, according to a government source, who requested anonymity because the news was not yet public.

The project, to be administered through the Sudbury, Ont.-based Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation, would be the latest in the past few weeks to receive funding from the federal government’s ‘net zero’ Strategic Innovation Fund, an $8-billion fund meant to help industry de-carbonize over the next several years.

“The mining sector is critical to the Canadian economy as it supports well-paying jobs in communities across the country,” Innovation, Science and Industry Minister François-philippe Champagne said in a release obtained by Financial Post. “Today’s announcement will help bridge the innovation-to-commercialization gap.”

The project is expected to cost a total of $112 million, according to the government source. Other partners on the project include the University of British Columbia’s Bradshaw Research Initiative for Minerals and Mining; Innotech Alberta, a provincial corporation that conducts applied research; Saskatchewan Polytechnic; MARS, the public-private research hub in Toronto; Le Groupe MISA, a Quebec-based non-profit that aims to stimulate innovation in the mining sector; and the College of the North Atlantic.

Bora Ugurgel, manager of investor relations for Sudbury-based Frontier Lithium Inc., and former chief operating officer at the Centre for Mining Excellence, said he is hoping the accelerator can provide some funds to help his company devise a cleaner way to convert lithium concentrate into lithium hydroxide. “Our job is to do that in an environmentally benign way,” Ugurgel said.

Frontier is still in the exploration stage and is years away from mining any lithium, though it is in the process of proving up a deposit in Ontario. In June, the firm announced $363,000 in funding from Ontario.

But Ugurgel estimated his firm needs to raise $1 billion to build a low-carbon electrochemical conversion plant, saying investors want more than “a desktop study” for that level of financing. He’s hopeful the accelerator can provide some additional funds to Frontier.

Douglas Morrison, currently CEO of the Centre for Excellence in Mining, would become president of the new accelerator as well. The former mining engineer, who has worked in the nickel mines in Sudbury and as a consultant on ultra-deep mining, was not available for comment.