The former site of the Thunder Bay generating station is Frontier Lithium’s preferred spot to build a lithium conversion plant.
The Sudbury company announced Feb. 25 that it expects to seal the deal on Friday to acquire the 183-acre brownfield land on Mission Island along the city’s harbourfront. A company representative confirmed the site.
In a news release, Frontier said it’s held an option to purchase this property since June 2023.
Come Feb. 28, the company said that option will be exercised with a definitive purchase and sale agreement to purchase the land and close the transaction.
The $3,350,000 in financing to buy the property comes through a convertible loan from a lender that’s considered a related party to Frontier in the from of an “affiliate or associated entity” of Rick Walker, Frontier’s board chair.
The seller of the property wasn’t disclosed in the news release. The last known owner of the land was Budget Demolition of Hamilton, which put the property up for sale after demolishing the power plant in 2022. The former Ontario Power Generation coal and wood pellet power plant was shut down in 2018.
In the company’s eyes, Thunder Bay is the closest city to its high-grade and large PAK lithium project, north of Red Lake.
The vacant site features 50 acres of water lot. Besides its size and water access, the property has road, rail and power connections, and a permit to take water.
In its release, Frontier said Thunder Bay offers “excellent transportation infrastructure and connectivity to other potential feedstock sources, as well as domestic and international markets for the potential future shipment of finished lithium salts.”
There are no operating lithium mines in the region, but Frontier is one of four leading lithium developers in the northwest that's attracting world interest for its critical mineral potential.
As the only major city in the region, Thunder Bay is shaping up to become a major lithium processing hub with three of those four companies choosing the city for its spacious brownfield lands on the shore of Lake Superior.
Green Technology Metals, owner of two lithium deposits in the northwest, is evaluating the Midcontinent Terminal property for its chemical refinery.
Kenora mine developer Avalon Advanced Materials is assessing the economics of placing a processor at the former Smurfit Stone property in the city’s north end.
The only outlier is Rock Tech Lithium, which selected a waterfront brownfield in Red Rock to place its proposed refinery. The former mill property there is 60 kilometres south of its Georgia Lake deposit off Highway 11.
Frontier bills its PAK Project as North America's highest-grade lithium resource and is the largest in Ontario. The 26,000-hectare property hosts two spodumene-bearing lithium deposits. The initial mine life is 24 years.
The company has lured a big-time project backer in Mitsubishi Corporation and last year received word that the Ontario and federal governments are finally committing funds to build bridge and road infrastructure to connect the remote PAK project with the provincial highway network.
