Rock Tech Lithium and Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper have received the 2026 Northern Innovators Award for a project linking two industries that rarely appear in the same production flow sheet.

One starts with wood.

The other starts with hard rock.

The connection is crude tall oil, or CTO—a co-product of kraft pulping that the partners are evaluating as a locally sourced flotation reagent for lithium processing in Northern Ontario.

The project, undertaken with research support from Queen’s University, has received C$262,500 from Ontario’s Critical Minerals Innovation Fund. The province describes the objective as validating whether CTO can provide a lower-cost, lower-emission reagent for lithium processing while creating another market for Ontario’s forest sector.

The award recognizes the collaboration.

But it does not mean the chemistry has already been proven commercially.

That distinction is crucial.

Rock Tech’s latest announcement still says “if successfully validated.” No commercial flotation recovery, reagent-consumption, concentrate-grade or operating-cost data have yet been published for the CTO project.

So the real story is not that pulp-mill tall oil has suddenly solved part of lithium processing.

It is this:

Can an existing kraft-pulp co-product be qualified as a reliable industrial reagent for a completely different resource industry—and, if it can, does that give pulp mills another way to extract value from every tonne of wood they process?

For a Canadian forest-products sector trying to find more value beyond conventional paper grades, that is a much more interesting question than the award itself.

First, What Exactly Is Crude Tall Oil?

Crude tall oil is not an exotic new biomaterial invented for batteries.

It is already part of kraft-pulp chemistry.

During kraft pulping, extractives originating in wood enter the black-liquor system. Tall-oil soap can be separated and acidulated to produce crude tall oil.

Environment and Climate Change Canada describes CTO as a co-product of kraft pulping containing a complex mixture of fatty acids, resin acids and neutral compounds. Its composition can vary with wood species and mill operating conditions.

CTO can subsequently be refined into products including tall-oil fatty acids and tall-oil rosin, which already have applications across chemicals, adhesives, lubricants, coatings and other industries. Tall oil has also attracted considerable interest as a renewable-fuel feedstock.

That makes one piece of language important.

Thunder Bay’s CTO should not simply be called “waste.”

The mill already has commercial outlets for it.

Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper Vice-President of Operations Brenden Thew said in July that the operation sells tall oil to other customers, including for uses associated with aviation fuel. The mill also produces turpentine as another kraft-pulp co-product.

The lithium project is therefore not about finding the first use for a discarded material.

It is about testing another possible market for an already valuable pulp-mill side stream.

That is a materially different story.

Tall Oil in Mineral Flotation Is Not a New Scientific Idea

There is another point the award announcement does not make obvious.

Using tall-oil chemistry in mineral flotation is not unprecedented.

Research literature on spodumene beneficiation—the processing of one of the principal hard-rock lithium minerals—shows that fatty-acid collectors are widely used to make spodumene surfaces sufficiently hydrophobic for separation by froth flotation.

Tall-oil fatty acids, commonly shortened to TOFA, are among the collectors documented in spodumene flotation research and industrial practice.

A recent mineral-processing study likewise describes tall-oil fatty acids and sodium oleate as common collector chemistries for spodumene.

So Rock Tech and its partners are not starting from a chemical blank sheet.

That actually makes the project more interesting.

The key distinction is between refined tall-oil fatty acids and the specific crude tall oil produced by the Thunder Bay kraft process.

Those are not necessarily interchangeable materials.

CTO contains fatty acids, resin acids and neutral compounds in varying proportions. A refined TOFA product has undergone downstream processing that changes and narrows its composition.

The question is therefore not:

“Can tall-oil-derived chemistry float spodumene?”

There is already evidence that it can.

The more commercially relevant question is:

“Can this locally produced crude tall oil deliver acceptable lithium recovery, concentrate grade, selectivity, reagent consumption and process stability without requiring so much additional treatment that its cost advantage disappears?”

That is the experiment worth following.

Flotation Performance Is Where the Project Will Be Won or Lost

Rock Tech’s Georgia Lake project is based on spodumene-bearing pegmatite in the Thunder Bay district.

Its existing concentrator design includes crushing, grinding, dense-media separation and flotation, with the objective of producing a spodumene concentrate containing approximately 6% Li₂O.

In flotation, reagents help differentiate the valuable mineral from unwanted gangue.

That sounds straightforward.

It is not.

Spodumene can occur alongside quartz, feldspar, mica and other minerals with surface characteristics that make selective separation difficult.

Research has repeatedly identified selectivity as one of the weaknesses of conventional fatty-acid collectors. Operating conditions such as pH, reagent dosage and conditioning can materially affect recovery and concentrate quality.

This is where the composition of crude tall oil matters.

If a variable crude stream performs differently from batch to batch, a low reagent purchase price alone will not make it attractive to a concentrator.

A mining operation needs predictable metallurgy.

A reagent that saves money per kilogram but reduces lithium recovery or introduces instability elsewhere in the flotation circuit could easily destroy more value than it saves.

Conversely, if Thunder Bay CTO performs close to an established commercial collector while requiring less processing and shorter transportation, the economics become considerably more interesting.

We do not yet know which outcome applies.

No published data from the current project allow that conclusion today.

The Award Came Before the Technical Answer

That timing needs to remain clear.

Ontario announced the C$262,500 CMIF grant in June.

By July, Rock Tech said work had already been underway for several months and expected another three to six months of research before it could establish whether the concept could work on the ground.

The September Northern Innovators Award therefore recognizes the concept and collaboration while the validation work is still developing.

Rock Tech’s September release itself continues to use conditional language.

It says that if successfully validated, CTO could become a more localized source of flotation reagents and inform future technical and economic optimization of the Georgia Lake project.

That is the correct way to report the project today.

We do not yet have:

commercial reagent dosage;

comparative CTO versus conventional collector cost;

lithium recovery;

final concentrate grade;

impurity profile;

reagent variability data;

full-scale operating trials;

or a life-cycle assessment establishing the claimed emissions advantage.

Until those numbers appear, phrases such as “cheaper,” “cleaner” or “lower emission” remain objectives or company expectations, not demonstrated project outcomes.

Thunder Bay Gives the Project a Much Deeper Forestry Context

Why should a pulp-industry reader care about what happens in a flotation cell?

Because of what has happened at the Thunder Bay mill itself.

Earlier this year, Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper announced that it would discontinue its newsprint operation after North American newsprint demand fell sharply.

The mill said North American newsprint demand had fallen 40% since 2022, including an 18% decline during 2025.

Up to 150 positions were affected.

The site would continue operating around its softwood kraft pulp business and renewable-energy generation.

That makes the tall-oil project much more than a convenient circular-economy case.

One traditional forest-product market has just disappeared from this mill.

At almost the same moment, management is examining whether a co-product from its remaining kraft operation can serve an entirely different industry.

That is the second story.

Thunder Bay is moving from relying on paper markets alone toward asking how many separate revenue streams can be extracted from a kraft-pulp platform.

Pulp remains the core product.

But electricity, tall oil, turpentine and other biorefinery streams can matter increasingly when mills are forced to compete in volatile global fiber markets.

This does not mean CTO sales to lithium mining could replace lost newsprint revenue.

There is no evidence to support that conclusion, and neither partner has disclosed the potential tonnage or value of any future CTO contract.

But the strategic direction is meaningful.

For a kraft mill, making more valuable use of what is already inside the wood can improve the economics of the whole site without requiring another forest harvest solely for that new product.

The Opportunity Is More About Margin Than Volume

This is an important point for the broader pulp industry.

No one should expect lithium flotation to suddenly become another pulp-sized market for tall oil.

Rock Tech has not published the CTO consumption rate it expects at Georgia Lake.

Without reagent dosage and mine throughput data from the ongoing study, it would be irresponsible to calculate a future CTO demand figure.

Even if the project works, the likely value to a pulp mill will depend on several variables:

the tonnes of CTO required;

delivered reagent price;

the price obtainable in existing CTO markets;

transport cost;

any additional conditioning or refining required;

contract duration;

and the consistency specification demanded by the mine.

That means a new application can be commercially attractive even without consuming enormous tonnage.

For pulp mills, higher-value co-products are often a margin story before they become a volume story.

Finding a nearby industrial buyer can also matter because CTO already has alternative uses.

A new lithium application would have to compete economically with those outlets rather than magically create value from something worth zero today.

“Local” Has Real Value—but It Needs to Be Measured

Rock Tech and Ontario repeatedly emphasize localization.

The logic is understandable.

Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper and the Georgia Lake lithium development are both in Northern Ontario.

Rock Tech’s broader plan also includes the proposed Red Rock lithium converter in the same regional supply chain.

A shorter reagent supply chain could potentially reduce transport costs, shorten lead times and limit dependence on imported chemicals.

But this is another place where reporting needs discipline.

We do not have a published comparison showing:

the current reagent’s origin;

shipping distance;

delivered cost;

CO₂ intensity;

or the expected CTO logistics footprint.

So localization is a plausible advantage.

Its magnitude is not yet quantified.

The same caution applies to emissions.

A forestry-derived input is not automatically lower carbon merely because it comes from a tree.

Production, acidulation, refining if required, transportation and substitution effects all need to be considered.

A credible emissions claim would eventually require a defined system boundary and comparison with the reagent CTO is replacing.

There Is Also a Supply-Quality Question Pulp Mills Will Understand Immediately

Pulp producers know that wood is not chemically identical from one truckload to another.

Crude tall oil reflects that reality.

The Canadian government notes that CTO composition varies with both pulpwood characteristics and mill operating conditions.

That variability may be manageable.

But if lithium flotation becomes a real commercial outlet, reagent customers may demand narrower specifications than some existing CTO markets.

That could create an interesting feedback into the pulp mill itself.

Would CTO need additional quality control?

Would customers specify fatty-acid content?

Resin-acid content?

Moisture?

Neutral compounds?

Viscosity?

Impurities?

Would the mill need to segregate or condition certain streams?

We do not know yet.

No commercial specification from Rock Tech has been published.

But these are precisely the questions that determine whether a pulp-mill co-product becomes a repeatable specialty chemical rather than simply an opportunistic byproduct sale.

Rock Tech Has Already Been Using Research to Rewrite the Georgia Lake Flow Sheet

There is another reason this trial deserves attention.

The CTO study is not Rock Tech’s first Ontario-backed effort to change the economics of Georgia Lake.

A previous CMIF-supported program with Queen’s University and STARK Resources examined ore sorting.

Rock Tech reported in May that pilot work rejected approximately 25–45% of waste material before downstream processing, while upgrading the remaining stream by about 1.4 to 1.8 times. It said early engineering indicated a potential pathway to reduce crushing and concentrator capital requirements by as much as 50%, subject to further engineering and validation.

Those numbers are company-reported and should remain subject to the stated qualifications.

But the pattern is revealing.

Rock Tech is attacking the economics of lithium concentration from more than one direction.

First:

send less waste rock through expensive downstream processing.

Now:

test whether a locally sourced pulp-mill co-product can improve the reagent side of flotation.

That makes the tall-oil trial more than a sustainability exercise.

It is part of an attempt to reduce the cost structure of the concentrator.

This Is Where Mining and Forestry Economics Actually Meet

The phrase “cross-sector collaboration” is easily overused.

Here it has a concrete meaning.

The pulp mill has a chemical co-product.

The mine needs a collector reagent.

The university provides mineral-processing expertise.

The province is funding validation.

And both primary industries operate in the same broad Northern Ontario industrial economy.

If the reagent performs, the value proposition becomes bilateral.

Rock Tech could obtain another local input for its concentrator.

Thunder Bay Pulp and Paper could gain another outlet for a kraft-process co-product.

That is considerably more meaningful than companies simply signing a memorandum promising to “explore synergies.”

But there is an equally important condition:

both sides have to win economically.

If Rock Tech can purchase conventional reagent more cheaply and reliably elsewhere, local origin alone will not carry the project.

If Thunder Bay can earn more selling CTO into existing fuel or chemical markets, the pulp mill will not redirect material simply to support a regional mining narrative.

Circularity still has a market price.

This Is What Pulp-Mill Diversification Should Look Like

The forestry industry has spent years talking about the biorefinery.

Often, that discussion jumps directly to large new businesses:

biofuels,

lignin,

bioplastics,

textile fibers,

or advanced chemicals.

The Thunder Bay project illustrates another route.

Sometimes diversification does not require building an entirely new pulp mill or converting a paper machine.

It means finding better markets for molecules the kraft process already produces.

That can include tall oil.

Turpentine.

Lignin.

Biogenic carbon dioxide.

Excess renewable power.

Other chemical and energy streams.

Not every pulp mill produces every one of these at commercial scale, and not every new use will prove economic.

But the strategic principle is becoming increasingly relevant:

the economics of a modern kraft mill cannot always be judged only by the market price of pulp.

A mill that can monetize more of the wood barrel has more options than one that depends almost entirely on a single fiber product.

Thunder Bay’s newsprint exit makes that point particularly difficult to ignore.

The Next Announcement Needs Numbers, Not Another Award

The 2026 Northern Innovators Award gives the project visibility.

The next milestone should give the industry evidence.

For the pulp and mining sectors, I would watch for five numbers:

lithium recovery, concentrate grade, CTO dosage, delivered reagent cost and batch-to-batch consistency.

Those would tell us far more than another sustainability statement.

If crude tall oil can produce competitive recovery and concentrate quality at an attractive delivered cost, the project could create a credible new specialty outlet for kraft-pulp chemistry.

If it requires extensive refining, produces inconsistent flotation or sacrifices recovery, the regional-circularity argument will not rescue the economics.

Both outcomes would still be useful.

That is what industrial validation is for.

The Northern Ontario partnership has already demonstrated an interesting idea:

a pulp mill that lost part of its traditional paper market may find one of its next customers inside a lithium concentrator.

Now it has to demonstrate that the chemistry—and the economics—work.

For kraft-pulp producers, that raises a question worth asking well beyond Thunder Bay:

When you look at your mill’s tall oil, turpentine and other side streams, are you still treating them mainly as byproducts—or are you actively searching for the next industrial market willing to pay more for what is already coming out of the process?

Last Updated on 10/09/2026 by Jota Machinery