The global mining industry is moving toward greener operations by adopting an approach built on increased awareness of climate change, consistent compliance with international regulations, and an overall goal of lowering carbon emissions. At the vanguard of supporting mining and mineral processing firms to reduce their environmental impact through timely process optimization and state-of-the-art technologies is Canada-headquartered Corem.

The company is a non-profit expertise and innovation center that offers a range of dedicated research and innovation services that help mining corporations develop and optimize critical mineral processing plants and make significant strides toward achieving greener and more competitive operations. Its seasoned team is pivotal in client engagements, leveraging industry and technical know-how to rapidly develop pre-competitive research programs for empowering early-stage and multi-sector transformation in the market. Competing companies jointly conduct the pre-competitive research program to develop knowledge and create innovative processes and technologies applicable across the mining industry. Through its pre-competitive research program, Corem follows a unique business model to offer innovation development and deployment services for the mining industry, allowing it to establish a clientele of numerous large mining companies with operations in Canada and beyond. The model also offers a one-to-one approach to engaging with clients, where the company actively collaborates with mining firms to improve and revolutionize current processes with tech-driven implementations that enhance customers’ (government and private) scalability and overall productivity.

“At Corem, we also partner with junior mining companies and work toward extracting and refining critical and strategic minerals, especially battery value chain minerals such as lithium, graphite, and cobalt,” says Francis Fournier, president and CEO of Corem.

The company’s expertise includes comminution, flotation, physical separation, extractive metallurgy, pelletizing, and thermal processing. For example, the company has been working on projects to reduce the energy expended in crushing and grinding processes. High-pressure grinding rolls (HPGR) that are proven more effective than conventional communition circuits, decreasing energy consumption by 40 percent and reducing overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, have been studied extensively at Corem. Also, through its pre-competitive research program, Corem works to replace or eliminate the use of metallurgical coke in iron-ore pelletizing plants, which vastly reduces GHG emissions without affecting operating costs. The company attempts to achieve this through Biochar (carbon-rich biomass), which is one of the options offered.

What differentiates Corem is its relationship and approach with its network of members and clients, which consists of mining companies and industry experts. Through their partnership with Corem, members leverage their industry know-how innovation. They gain early access to the latest developments in mineral processing technologies and play a pivotal role in their implementation, which increases the benefits of the pre-competitive research program. In one instance, Corem successfully demonstrated the applicability and transferability of a technology used for processing non-metallic materials to the iron ore industry. Subsequently, some of Corem’s members have implemented the technology and significantly improved their iron recovery.

Powered by innovative solutions, Corem works closely with its members, customers, and partners to benefit the mining industry by creating unquestionable economic, environmental, or social value.