Rhonda Barnet, DIGITAL; Viviane Lapointe, Sudbury MP; Mélanie Joly, Minister of Industry; Erin Marshall, Koonkie; and Theresa Quick, Novamera. Credit: DIGITAL.
DIGITAL, a Vancouver-based technology supercluster, has announced $6.7 million in funding for two Canadian-led mining technologies to boost crucial mineral extraction and mine restoration methods.
Novamera, based in Oakville, Ontario, will receive $3.8 million from DIGITAL to advance its Surgical Mining solution, which is an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven subsurface imaging technology for finding mining targets. According to DIGITAL, the technique can minimize waste by up to 90%, depending on the site conditions.
Koonkie Canada will get an additional $2.89 million to support its Multi-lens Ecological Restoration Monitoring and Forecasting initiative. According to DIGITAL, the agreement will help build a new AI platform for monitoring ecological restoration and biodiversity. Koonkie’s partners claim that the platform will cut rehabilitation times by five to ten years.
“North America has no shortage of critical minerals—we have a shortage of ways to bring them into production quickly and responsibly,” stated Jim Hollis, Novamera’s CEO.
Steven Hallam, Koonkie’s CEO and co-founder, noted, “Ecological restoration requires better data, better forecasting, and better integration of knowledge systems.”
Rhonda Barnet, DIGITAL’s interim CEO, stated, “Canada needs critical minerals to strengthen our economic security and sovereignty, but we cannot rely on yesterday’s mining methods to get there.”
The total value of the two projects is $19.9 million.
