The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
Metal Tech News - July 31, 2025
Electra's technical team is testing the ability to refine cobalt from Idaho and Ontario feedstocks at the company's hydrometallurgical refinery.
An old mine building in Ontario's Cobalt Mining District.
Workers in the underground mine development at Electra's Iron Creek cobalt-copper project in Idaho.
With its sights set on establishing a complete cobalt supply chain in North America, Electra Battery Materials Corp. is testing whether concentrates from Ontario and Idaho can be processed at its Ontario refinery.
"With critical minerals independence now a clear policy priority, we are focused on developing localized midstream solutions that support both the U.S. and Canadian supply chains," said Electra Battery Materials CEO Trent Mell. "Our facility is designed to evolve alongside market needs, and this initiative positions Electra to play a leading role in that transformation."
Located within Ontario's historic Cobalt Mining District, Electra's refinery is the only facility of its kind in North America. The hydrometallurgical refinery – which utilizes aqueous solutions to extract and purify metals from ores, concentrates, and recycled materials – produced cobalt from 1996 to 2015.
Since acquiring the facility in 2017, Electra has been upgrading and expanding the facility to refine and recycle cobalt, nickel, and other battery materials. This work has attracted interest from governments and industry. This includes mining and commodities giant Glencore, which signed a deal to process cobalt feedstock sourced from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through the refinery, and battery-maker LG Energy Solution, which has an agreement to offtake 80% of the battery-grade cobalt sulfate produced at the Ontario facility for five years.
Now, Electra is looking to diversify the refinery's feedstock with materials sourced from the local Cobalt District, as well as the company's Iron Creek cobalt-copper project in Idaho – one of the only primary cobalt deposits in the U.S.
The company believes its refinery can overcome some of the challenges hampering the development of a cobalt supply chain in North America.
"Many North American cobalt-bearing mineral resources have remained undeveloped due to mineralogy that is incompatible with conventional smelting and refining," said Mell. "Our hydrometallurgical process offers a potential domestic solution to that challenge, aligned with the battery market and geopolitical imperatives."
An old mine building in Ontario's Cobalt Mining District.
The issue with refining cobalt mined from many North American deposits is that the multi-metal sulfide concentrates produced contain elevated arsenic levels, which can create problems for pyrometallurgical refineries, which use high temperatures to extract and purify metals.
To address the cobalt refining challenges, Electra's experienced technical team is conducting tests and analysis at the company's in-house laboratory to validate and refine a circuit for the Ontario Cobalt refinery designed to process North American materials, including the problematic arsenic-bearing polymetallic sulfide materials.
"These tests will give us a clearer picture of how North American cobalt-bearing concentrates can be processed using Electra's hydrometallurgical technology," said George Puvvada, Electra Battery Materials' vice president of metallurgy and technology.
While the current focus is on cobalt-copper and cobalt-silver feedstocks from Idaho and Ontario, respectively, Electra believes its proposed flowsheet enhancements may also be applied to custom treatment of gold concentrates with elevated arsenic levels, an area of growing interest among North American miners at a time of record gold prices.
"I believe we can responsibly recover critical metals from North American feeds and significantly expand the range of materials our refinery can process," Puvvada added.
Workers in the underground mine development at Electra's Iron Creek cobalt-copper project in Idaho.
The ability to process concentrates from its Iron Creek project in Idaho would enable Electra to vertically integrate a domestic mine-to-metal cobalt supply chain.
Located in the Idaho Cobalt Belt – a historical source of cobalt about 135 miles northeast of Boise – Iron Creek is a partially developed underground mine project with significant energy metals potential.
Based on more than 30,000 meters of drilling completed by Electra so far, Iron Creek hosts 4.4 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.19% (18.4 million pounds) cobalt and 0.73% (71.5 million lb) copper; plus 1.2 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.08% (2.1 million lb) cobalt and 1.34% (36.5 million lb) copper.
The deposit outlined so far only represents a portion of the potential at Iron Creek, a 28.2-square-mile occurrences property that hosts seven mineralized prospects discovered on surface or with drilling.
Processing feedstock from the Idaho and Ontario cobalt belts would diversify Electra's input stream and strengthen North America's access to a secure cobalt supply.
With more than 17 years of covering mining, Shane is renowned for his insights and in-depth analysis of mining, mineral exploration, and technology metals.
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