Historic Tanco mine in Manitoba producing lithium again – but this time under China’s Sinomine 

More than a decade after shutting down lithium production, the Tanco mine in Manitoba started producing lithium spodumene concentrate in December, the mine’s facility general manager Joey Champagne told The Northern Miner in an interview, making it a rare manufacturer of the raw material in Canada.   

Owned by Sinomine Resources, a company listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China, the mine shipped about 2,000 tonnes of spodumene concentrates to its sister company Jiangxi Donpeng New Materials last year to feed its battery grade lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate production lines, according to a Sinomine press release.  

While the company currently supplies all of its lithium raw materials to its sister company in China, it aims to supply spodumene to the North American market in the future and is working to expand its resource and develop a lithium hydroxide and carbonate plant locally, Champagne, who is also Sinomine’s North American operations director, said.  

“The previous lithium operation on site was shut down in 2009 (due to market demand) and it was primarily focused on the ceramics industry and very high-quality products,” said Champagne. “With the recent shift in market and the need for battery grade concentrates, we decided to restart our lithium operations and refurbished the existing plants to a state that’s within our operational limitations.”  

The Tantalum Mining Corp. of Canada Limited, known as the Tanco mine, is located about 160 km northeast of Winnipeg and has been in production for over 50 years. Over the years, the mine has produced tantalum, pollucite, lithium and cesium.  

About 1.8 million tonnes of spodumene has been mined at the site since 1984, before production was suspended in 2009, according to a notice of alteration filed in the Manitoba public registry in 2013. The remaining reserves include an indicated spodumene resource of 1.3 million tonnes grading 2.7% lithium oxide and an inferred resource of 657,694 tonnes grading 2.6% lithium oxide. It also has proven reserves of 427,674 tonnes at an average feed grade of 2.4% lithium oxide.   

Sinomine acquired the mine, which currently consists of an underground room and pillar mine, a spodumene concentrator mill and a cesium chemical processing facility and employs about 100 workers, from Cabot Corp. in 2019 and has ever since worked towards refurbishing the mine to restart lithium production.  

“From that day forward, we started evaluating the different opportunities that exist with our mine site because they (Sinomine) were previously ingrained in this market,” said Champagne. “They do bring a lot of technical expertise and have a lot of background in processing the minerals that we have on site.” 

The renovation, which included equipment refurbishment in the mill and replacing obsolete components that were last used in 2009, began in October. Once the mine reaches its capacity, it aims to produce 30,000 tonnes of 5.5% lithium spodumene concentrate annually, according to Sinomine, a goal which the company expects to reach by the end of the year.  

Explaining the extraction process, Champagne said ore from the underground mine is crushed, runs through multiple beneficiation circuits and a flotation upgrading process before being dried and packaged. “We upgrade the varying grade of ore to a battery grade concentrate, which can range anywhere from 5.5% to 6%,” he said. 

Local lithium hydroxide plant 

The company’s longer-term goal includes expanding its resources and conducting a study to build a lithium hydroxide and carbonate plant locally, which would reduce shipping costs and help supply to the north American market.  

“Typically, the hydroxide-carbonate still needs further processing by different customers and we are already ingrained into that in China. Taking it to bigger North American customers it should be a fairly easy transition,” said Champagne.  

John Morris, a co-director at the Mining Association of Manitoba, said he was excited to see Tanco become a successful spodumene-producing operation.  

“The significant element here is the beginning of lithium mining in Canada and Manitoba,” he said.  “There are several projects in the works for lithium exploration and mining in Manitoba and we are looking to become a national leader in the development of critical minerals.” 

Lithium production in Canada 

Natural Resources Canada, in an emailed statement to The Northern Miner, said it was aware that the spodumene processing circuit at Tanco had been restored and that it had commenced operation. But to its understanding, production at the mine was yet to resume. 

A representative of the Manitoba government, where the mine is based, however, confirmed that the mine had restarted its lithium production. “We can confirm Tanco has a good working relationship with the province and we are aware of the production of lithium and other commodities,” Craig MacDonald, Industrial Development Consultant at the Economic Development Board Secretariat, told The Northern Miner. 

Canada, which has an estimated 2.9 million tonnes of lithium resources, has had limited production of lithium from 2014 to 2019 and none in 2020, according to Natural Resources Canada. A number of companies though are involved in lithium projects that range from early exploration to an advanced stage.  

The North American Lithium mine in Quebec reached commercial production in early 2018 and shipped spodumene concentrate to refineries in China for processing into lithium carbonate before suspending operations in 2019 as prices of lithium products fell sharply. The mine was acquired by Sayona Québec in 2021, a joint venture between Sayona Mining and Piedmont Lithium. 

Nemaska Lithium produced its first spodumene concentrate at the Whabouchi mine in Quebec in early 2017, but suspended production in 2019, and the mine was put on care and maintenance.  

Champagne though is confident of Tanco’s ability to weather future storms and contribute to the transition away from fossil fuels. As he puts it, “this change to electrification is happening and we are at the forefront of that.”