Basically, this is a process that was developed over a six-year timeframe and was originally designed to be working with what's called a primary metal, in other words, a concentrate from mined material in the Cobalt Camp. Over that six-year timeframe, we did a lot of bench-scale test work. We designed two pilot plants, then did full scale testing, and we produced, at that time, a cobalt carbonate. The market wanted a cobalt carbonate, so we produced a cobalt carbonate, and we were on spec.
Moving forward, conditions change, demands change, so now the market wants cobalt sulphate. So, we took the process and we produced cobalt sulphate with it.
A little bit about why it's called Re-2Ox. Everybody thinks the Re means recycle. Not really. It means reactor. We have two reactors in this process that are used to take the primary metals, which are from the mines, and the secondary metals, which are the spent batteries and, of course, for the two reactors, we need oxygen in the process. We put that all into a design of a process, called Re-2Ox, as you see in the flow-sheet and our intent is to use the process to produce battery metals.
We started this about three years ago, and we wanted to recycle batteries. So we spent a fair amount of time traveling throughout Asia, North America, and Europe. And what we found was there was not actually a lot of spent batteries available. So instead of waiting for the opportunity, we created the opportunity. We created a very high cobalt-nickel-copper concentrate with high arsenic, and then we subjected it to the Re-2Ox process. And lo and behold, we produced what we call cobalt sulphate to Asian specs. It was a company called Sumitomo that gave us the specs, and they were the only ones who gave us specs, so using their specs, we did produce a cobalt sulphate for the battery market.