In a bid to further secure Ontario's place in the critical minerals supply chain, the Ontario government announced May 23 that $262,100 is being spent to upgrade the Chemical Analysis and Scientific Services (CASS) laboratory at Cambrian College.
The announcement came at a news event at the college from Ontario's Northern Economic Development and Growth Minister George Pirie.
He said the money is being provided through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC) to help build applied research infrastructure to support early stage critical mineral projects in the North.
Pirie said the lab will be able to work with small- and medium-sized companies to perform applied research and development to help them get the data they need for enhancing their operations.
"The fact that that research and development is being done here locally is incredibly important. Why? Because we are the home of those critical minerals. We want to see the value-added products built here,” said Pirie.
“We know we have to pivot from the markets in the U.S. And to do that, we have to conduct the research and develop the finished products right here.”
As an aside, Pirie said the work was important to encouraging more young people to stay in Northern Ontario to learn the skills and leadership needed to provide good jobs and a viable future for themselves. More importantly, said Pirie, is that places such as Cambrian College are attracting bright young people from other countries around the world.
Greater Sudbury Mayor Paul Lefebvre said he appreciated Pirie's enthusiasm for the North and said he shares the optimism for Sudbury, especially with the growth of research and development expertise in the mining industry.
Lefebvre said it is one of the key industries that will help Sudbury grow and prosper between now and 2050 because the education system will be turning out graduates that will be able to secure attractive employment.
"These programs have jobs for these courses that these students are enrolled in. They have great jobs, great opportunities and a great lifestyle," said Lefebvre, adding this will help keep more young people in Sudbury and Northern Ontario.
He added that he wants to see more research and development to help step up more mineral processing in Northern Ontario.
He said there was a time when it was important to ship northern raw minerals out to the rest of the world, but times have changed.
"Nowadays, with the electrification of our world, there's a great opportunity to do more, and it's just not one and done. I believe that there's more than one opportunity for the North," said Lefebvre.
He thanked the province for believing in and investing in Sudbury and Cambrian College.
Kristine Morrissey, the president of Cambrian, said she was pleased to see Ontario’s investment in the CASS lab.
“We're proud to be part of Sudbury's continued evolution of being the global mining hub, and really being known around the world for the work that we're doing," said Morrissey.
"Again, we've heard that it's not just for what we're taking out of the ground, but what we're doing with it — keeping it at home and adding that value here, creating jobs, strengthening our economy."
Dr. Madiha Khan, the analytical research lead at Cambrian, said she was pleased with how the additional funding will upgrade the capacity of the facility to be known as the Critical Minerals Development Lab.
"It's a really cutting-edge space,” she said. “We can offer an incredible range of analyses on samples that are primarily with liquid and gaseous states. So we can do everything from studying battery electrolytes to figuring out how hot your hot sauce is.
“And now, thanks to the generous support of our funding partners, we are able to offer elemental quantification in the solid state, among other things, in our new critical minerals development lab.”
Getting more specific, Kahn said the lab will also be able to analyze such things as the purity of lithium samples for battery electric vehicles.
"As you can imagine, this tech is quite specialized, and not everybody has ready access to it,” Khan said. “And I think that's really what makes this lab quite special.”
Kahn said the lab would be a place of discovery and innovation.
"Our lab will look for new ways to support a greener, circular, more sustainable economy. We're going to be working with like minded individuals, whether we're recovering matter from tailings or mass recycling from EV batteries or pioneering at the earlier stages of mineral processing," she said.
The best part she said it that the lab would give Cambrian students real world experience in advanced research and development work.
Len Gillis covers mining and health care for Sudbury.com.
