Whabouchi Lithium Mine & Shawinigan Electrochemical Plant Project
Location
Quebec, Canada
The Whabouchi Mine is located 300 km northwest of Chibougamau, Quebec, and the Plant is located 25 km north of Trois-Rivières, Quebec. The Whabouchi property includes an open pit mine, tailings storage and infrastructure. There is also a concentrator that is comprised of crushing, ore sorting, hydraulic separation, dense medium separation, magnetic separation, grinding, attrition scrubbing, desliming and flotation.
The final concentrate is transported by truck to Mattagami, Quebec, where it is loaded into rail cars for shipment to the hydrometallurgical plant near Trois Rivières.’ The plant comprises calcination, acid cure, leaching, solution purification, electrolysis, and final product lithium hydroxide monohydrate crystallisation.
OUR ROLE
- SLR acted as Independent Technical Consultant (ITC) on behalf of the Lenders
- The Due Diligence Report was to assess the Project from a technical, social, and environmental perspective.
- The document is a technical review of the Project as presented in the August 9, 2019 NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Updated Feasibility Report, the Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (the ESIA), and the NMX Business Plan (NBP) and Bank Case financial models.
- SLR visited the Project sites and the Project offices in Montreal, Quebec.
HIGHLIGHTS
- SLR employed multiple disciplines to efficiently complete the process to the satisfaction of EDC.
- SLR applied its Northern Engineering capabilities to assess the facilities with respect to extreme cold (sub-Arctic) operating conditions.
- The project was an opportunity to work on a complex spodumene concentrating and hydrometallurgical lithium processing facility.
