A forestry byproduct once associated mainly with pulp mills is being tested for a very different role in Northern Ontario: helping separate lithium-bearing mineral from waste rock. Rock Tech Lithium, Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper and Queen’s University are evaluating crude tall oil as a locally sourced flotation reagent, backed by $262,500 from Ontario’s Critical Minerals Innovation Fund. The collaboration gained fresh attention on September 9, when Rock Tech and Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper received the 2026 Northern Innovators Award.
The experiment is still a test, not a proven commercial breakthrough. But it captures a larger Canadian industrial ambition: linking Northern Ontario’s mining and forestry strengths with domestic lithium processing and, ultimately, the electric-vehicle supply chain. If the chemistry and economics hold up, a material produced by one established regional industry could become an input for another that is still being built.
The Project Is Testing a Local Substitute for a Mining Input
The project is testing whether crude tall oil from Ontario’s pulp-and-paper sector can work as a flotation reagent in lithium processing. The provincial government awarded Rock Tech Lithium $262,500 through the Critical Minerals Innovation Fund, with Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper supplying industrial context and Queen’s University contributing research expertise. Rock Tech says the work is intended to determine whether the locally sourced material can reduce reliance on imported or conventional reagents while generating data for future technical and economic optimization at its Georgia Lake lithium project.
That distinction matters because crude tall oil is not being proposed as a source of lithium. It would be part of the mineral-separation process used after hard rock has been crushed and ground. In practical terms, the trial asks whether a byproduct already generated by a Northern Ontario mill can help a nearby lithium operation concentrate spodumene more efficiently. The September 9 innovation award recognized the partnership itself. The latest public material still describes the technology as under evaluation, so commercial performance, cost savings and emissions benefits remain to be demonstrated rather than assumed.
Crude Tall Oil Could Give Forestry Byproduct a Second Market
Crude tall oil comes from the kraft pulping process and contains fatty acids, resin acids and other organic compounds. For pulp-and-paper producers, it is a secondary stream created while turning wood into pulp. For chemical and mineral-processing industries, however, those compounds can have value. Academic literature has long identified tall oil and tall-oil fatty acids as useful industrial feedstocks, including in flotation chemistry, which is why the Northern Ontario test is less exotic than it may sound at first.
The regional angle makes the experiment more interesting. Thunder Bay and the surrounding northwest have deep forestry infrastructure as well as an expanding critical-minerals sector. A successful use for crude tall oil could give a familiar mill byproduct another local market instead of treating forestry and mining as separate economic worlds. Ontario is already promoting greater use of forest biomass, mill byproducts and underused wood; in September, the province announced more than $17.3 million for four forestry projects aimed at modernization and stronger supply chains. The lithium trial fits that broader effort to extract more value from material already moving through Northern Ontario’s industrial base.
Flotation Is the Technical Heart of the Experiment
Flotation is one of the most important steps in many hard-rock lithium flowsheets because spodumene must be separated from minerals such as quartz, feldspar and mica before chemical conversion. Collectors are reagents that attach preferentially to targeted mineral surfaces and make those particles more likely to rise with air bubbles into a froth. Rock Tech’s Georgia Lake process design includes crushing, grinding, dense-media separation and flotation before producing a concentrate of roughly 6% lithium oxide, commonly described as SC6.
The chemistry is demanding. A 2023 review from Queen’s University researchers found that fatty acids are established spodumene collectors but can suffer from poor solubility and selectivity. A 2026 review in Minerals Engineering similarly noted that tall-oil-based collectors remain an industry standard while highlighting drawbacks such as low-temperature performance and variable selectivity. That is why the current project should be viewed as optimization work, not a simple substitution exercise. A local reagent only helps if it delivers acceptable lithium recovery and concentrate quality under real ore conditions, at realistic dosages, with handling characteristics that make sense in a commercial plant.
Georgia Lake Gives the Test a Real Industrial Context
The trial has a specific industrial destination in mind: Rock Tech’s wholly owned Georgia Lake project in the Thunder Bay Mining District. A 2022 pre-feasibility study outlined 10.6 million tonnes of indicated mineral resources grading 0.88% lithium oxide and 4.22 million tonnes of inferred resources grading 1.00%. It also reported 7.33 million tonnes of probable mineral reserves at 0.82% lithium oxide. The study envisioned a one-million-tonne-per-year concentrator and average production of about 100,000 tonnes per year of 6% spodumene concentrate over a nine-year mine life.
Those figures are several years old and remain planning assumptions rather than operating results, but they show why reagent choice can matter. A concentrator processing large volumes of rock consumes chemicals continuously, so small changes in dosage, recovery, selectivity or supply cost can compound over time. Rock Tech’s current strategy is to update and de-risk the project through further engineering and test work. The crude tall oil study therefore sits inside a much bigger question: whether Georgia Lake can be engineered into a competitive mine and concentrator that supplies battery-grade lithium conversion in Ontario rather than shipping all of its value overseas.
An Earlier Test Targeted Waste Before It Reached the Plant
This is not Rock Tech’s first provincially supported attempt to squeeze more efficiency from the Georgia Lake flowsheet. In May 2026, the company reported results from a separate Critical Minerals Innovation Fund-backed ore-sorting program completed with Queen’s University and STARK Resources. In controlled pilot-scale testing, the company said sensor-based sorting removed roughly 25% to 45% of waste material before downstream processing and increased the grade of the remaining material by about 1.4 to 1.8 times.
Rock Tech also said early engineering pointed to a possible reduction of up to 50% in future crushing and concentrator capital costs, while stressing that the result remains subject to further engineering, validation and integration into future technical studies. The crude tall oil work follows the same philosophy: improve the project before committing to full-scale construction. One test targets what enters the concentrator by discarding barren material earlier; the other examines a reagent used during separation. Neither result alone makes a mine economic. Together, however, they show how incremental process improvements could affect capital intensity, operating costs and the amount of material that must be handled.
Red Rock Is Intended to Provide the Downstream Link
Rock Tech’s Ontario plan does not stop at producing spodumene concentrate. The company is also advancing a proposed lithium conversion facility at Red Rock, about 100 kilometres east of Thunder Bay and roughly 60 kilometres south of the Georgia Lake deposit. Rock Tech says its scoping work contemplates production of up to 32,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent per year. The proposed site is a 337-acre industrial property with rail, road, natural-gas access and about 120 megawatts of power capacity, infrastructure the company argues could shorten development timelines.
In April 2026, Rock Tech and BMI Group announced a planned C$200-million anchor partnership for the Red Rock converter, including a near-term funding program of up to C$30 million aimed at engineering, permitting, environmental work and early site development. The company has said it is targeting a final investment decision by the end of 2026. These are forward-looking plans, not a completed refinery. Still, the strategic logic is clear: mine and concentrate lithium-bearing rock in Northern Ontario, then convert that material into battery-grade chemicals in the same region rather than relying entirely on offshore processing.
Commercial Agreements Are Beginning to Add Structure
Commercial agreements are beginning to give that mine-to-converter concept more structure. In July 2026, Rock Tech announced a binding long-term offtake agreement with Geneva-based Transamine for spodumene concentrate from Georgia Lake. The initial term is seven years beginning in 2028, with an option for up to five additional years, and covers as much as 100,000 dry metric tonnes annually. The arrangement also includes a development prepayment facility of up to US$80 million, according to the company.
Importantly, Rock Tech says the agreement preserves its ability to route Ontario concentrate into the proposed Red Rock converter. That flexibility matters because a domestic EV supply chain needs more than a mine: it needs customers, financing, logistics and chemical-processing capacity. The Transamine deal does not guarantee Georgia Lake will reach production on schedule, and the project still faces the usual financing, permitting, construction and market risks. But it provides a commercial pathway for planned output while the company works on a local conversion option. In that context, a seemingly small reagent trial becomes part of a wider effort to make the entire project more bankable and locally integrated.
Ontario Is Using Innovation Funding as Industrial Policy
Ontario’s support for the tall-oil project reflects a policy shift toward treating mining innovation as industrial strategy. The province launched the Critical Minerals Innovation Fund in 2022 to support research, development and commercialization across exploration, mining, processing and related technologies. Ontario’s 2025 budget said $20 million had already been invested through the program and committed another $5 million over two years. In June 2026, the province announced more than $4 million for another round of projects, including Rock Tech’s $262,500 award.
What makes this project stand out is the cross-sector design. Instead of funding only a new mining machine or laboratory process, the province is backing a link between forestry, mineral processing and university research. That approach can matter in Northern communities where industrial infrastructure, skilled trades, transportation networks and supplier relationships often serve more than one resource sector. It also spreads the potential economic value of critical-minerals development beyond the mine gate. If crude tall oil proves technically useful and commercially competitive, the benefit could include a new customer for a forestry-derived product as well as a more localized input for lithium concentration.
The Experiment Fits Canada’s Wider Battery Ambitions
The experiment also lands inside a much larger Canadian push to capture more of the battery value chain. Ottawa’s Critical Minerals Strategy identifies lithium as one of six initially prioritized minerals because of its role in batteries and other strategic technologies. Ontario, meanwhile, says it has attracted more than C$45 billion in EV and battery investments since 2020, spanning vehicle assembly, battery cells, separators and other components. The province’s challenge is to connect that downstream manufacturing buildout with mines and processing capacity in the north.
Canada has begun adding domestic lithium-refining capacity elsewhere as well. In April 2026, the federal government marked the opening of Mangrove Lithium’s commercial electrochemical refining facility in Delta, British Columbia, which it said could produce enough battery-grade lithium for about 25,000 EVs per year. Northern Ontario’s opportunity is different but complementary: develop hard-rock lithium resources, concentrate them locally and eventually convert them into battery-grade chemicals close to rail, power and the province’s automotive manufacturing corridor. The tall-oil test is small in dollar terms, yet it addresses exactly the kind of midstream detail that determines whether that broader chain is genuinely domestic.
Success Will Depend on Evidence, Not the Novelty of the Idea
Success will require more than showing that crude tall oil can make spodumene float in a laboratory. The project will need to demonstrate recovery, concentrate grade, reagent dosage, selectivity, stability across changing ore types, water chemistry, temperature performance, storage and handling requirements. It will also need a credible cost comparison with conventional collectors. Academic reviews warn that fatty-acid systems can be difficult to control and that real-ore testing is essential because performance can change with mineralogy, particle size and operating conditions.
The environmental claim deserves the same discipline. Rock Tech says a locally sourced forestry byproduct could potentially lower emissions and reduce dependence on imported reagents, but those benefits have not yet been quantified publicly for this project. Transportation distances, processing steps, chemical preparation, dosage and byproduct allocation would all affect a proper life-cycle comparison. That does not make the experiment less meaningful; it makes validation more important. If the trial works, Northern Ontario could turn an existing pulp-mill stream into a practical mining input. If it does not, the test still provides data that can steer future reagent choices before a large plant is built.
