Cobalt and the Major Gap in North America’s Supply Chain: Electra Battery Materials | Ep 14

Let's begin by talking about Electra Battery Materials.

What is the company exactly? What are you working on? What are you trying to achieve? What are you building?

Building a critical mineral supply chain for the Western world.

That's probably the easiest summary.

Started this company initially as First Cobalt, so we were specifically focused on that one critical mineral and doing exploration with a view to mine building.

And then along the way, we acquired a refinery through a transaction, and that became the core asset.

And with that, and that asset's located north of Toronto in the Temiskaming Shores, about five hours' drive, we recognized that we've got unique capabilities.

It's a hydrometallurgical refining process, the likes of which there are not very many outside of China.

And so we've been plugging away at that for about five years, and with that we've developed adjacent expertise in, in nickel refining and battery recycling as well.

Fantastic.

So the mining portion then, have you discarded that for the time being, or is that still working away in the background?

When we're as big as Glencore, maybe we can vertically integrate, but-

[laughs]

... for now the focus really is on mineral processing.

We do have mineral assets in the state of Idaho, a cobalt with copper, and they're valuable.

Right now we've got to get to cash flow, and that's via refining, and both Canada and the US are putting it just a huge priority right now in building this midstream processing capability.

It's an addressable market.

It's quicker to build, and then once you have that, you can find the materials and minerals to run through it, as we do with the smelters in Sudbury.

So our dollars, our capital allocation, is best spent on the refining piece, uh, at this point in our history.