In a tour of the NWT’s diamond capital in May, Li-FT Power said that in the wake of anticipated diamond mine closures, lithium might just be the catalyst for better days ahead.   

The Vancouver-based company has pinpointed 13 visual outcrops of spodumene-bearing pegmatite in the Yellowknife area and recently completed a drilling campaign of almost 50,000 metres. Chief Sustainability Officer April Hayward described results to a Yellowknife audience as “pretty promising”.  

Li-FT says much of its identified spodumene pegmatite is in visible outcrops

“There’s a window of opportunity for bringing hard rock lithium into the global lithium market,” Hayward told local media, “And that’s what we have in this area. The risk of not doing this in a timely manner and moving the project forward is that the technology to extract lithium from different sources is going to evolve very rapidly.”

It’s not often that the NWT is touted for its infrastructure advantages but speaking to KITCO Mining at the 2024 PDAC convention, Li-FT CEO Francis Macdonald says that in the absence of refining capacity in North America, it is one of the competitive advantages that the Yellowknife project has over traditional lithium jurisdictions like Ontario and Quebec. 

“There is a paved highway that goes through seven of our lithium deposits. There is rail in Hay River/Enterprise that will take us to Edmonton and from there, its easy to get out to the Pacific coast... That set us apart from a lot of other North American projects because we can actually get spodumene concentrate to Asia where it is (currently) being processed.”

If all goes well, Li-FT’s Yellowknife project could begin its environmental assessment process as early as next year - with production anticipated in 2030. 

In the meantime, Hayward says it is important that people are aware and ask questions and have their concerns addressed early.

“This project has great potential to fill an important economic gap in the Northwest Territories,” she says.