Geomega Resources Inc. announces consolidation of operations
by CM Staff
The HCl recycling research project is expected to be completed over 24 months and will have important synergies with other projects of the Corporation.
MONTREAL — Geomega Resources Inc., a developer of clean technologies for the mining, refining, and recycling of rare earths and other critical materials, announces that following a thorough review of its current and future projects and operations and an exhaustive research of the industrial real estate market in the Greater Montreal area, the Corporation has decided to combine all its operations into a single larger location in the town of St Hubert, Quebec.
In addition, Geomega’s private R&D subsidiary Innord Inc. has been awarded a $493K grant from the Program to Support Research and Development for the Extraction, Transformation and Recycling of Critical and Strategic metals, administered by Consortium de recherche et d’innovation en transformation métallique (CRITM), towards the development of a process for recycling of hydrochloric acid (HCl) from several metal chlorides which can be used for rare earth elements (REE) and scandium (Sc) recovery from multiple sources.
Furthermore, Geomega provided a technical update on the magnet recycling demonstration plant.
St Hubert centralized location for demonstration plant and R&D
The addition of new R&D projects over the last 24 months, including this HCl recycling process and more projects in the pipeline to expand their technologies to other major applications, has resulted in an increased space requirement for Geomega. On the other hand, the current facilities in Boucherville no longer made it possible to meet these growing needs neither for laboratory space nor for offices necessary to support hiring. With the construction of the magnet recycling demonstration plant starting later this year, the Corporation used the opportunity to relocate all the activities under one roof instead of expanding into a 3rd facility, incurring extra costs and more delays later on. The St-Hubert facility will meet the current needs while permitting growth and creating synergies between the different departments and projects.
“With no space for expansion and a potential risk of operating 3 facilities requiring their own analytical laboratories, prep labs and other services and utilities, the timing was right to consolidate all our activities before the construction of the demonstration plant starts. Having all our activities centralized with space to expand our R&D and perform multiple projects at the same time is going to benefit Geomega in the long run. This new R&D facility will be able to accommodate our growing pipeline of projects that are already in the application for funding phase. We are thrilled with this new location as it will allow us to streamline Geomega’s operations in the future and simplify the construction of the demonstration plant.” commented Kiril Mugerman, President & CEO of Geomega.
HCl recycling project funding from CRITM
The HCl recycling research project is expected to be completed over 24 months and will have important synergies with other projects of the Corporation. HCl is a leaching reagent that can be used to extract REE, Sc and other metals from various sources such as permanent magnets, monazite, bastnaesite and bauxite residues.
Magnet Recycling Demonstration Plant Update
The search for a new location over the last few months has had an impact on the engineering of the demonstration plant.
Equipment that was ordered in 2022 continued to arrive in St Bruno and will be later moved to St Hubert. The equipment that was expected to be ordered in the last few months has been postponed due to the change of location and are now restarting.
