Thunder Bay’s historic working waterfront could be repurposed to serve northwestern Ontario’s booming lithium industry and Ontario’s budding electric vehicle manufacturing base.
Vacant paper mill properties and other industrial brownfields are much sought-after properties for companies like Toronto’s Avalon Advanced Materials and Green Technology Metals of Australia. This week, a third company, Rock Tech Lithium, announced Thunder Bay is on its radar to site a processor. In Quebec, the federal and provincial government there are investing heavily to attract multinationals like Ford, GM, nickel miner Vale and chemical producer BASF to a mammoth battery metals processing hub at the port city of Bécancour.Want to read more stories about business in the North? Subscribe to our newsletter.
Some properties have environmental legacy issues that will need remediation, but that’s part of the due diligence process by the prospective owners, Kane said.