NORAM Electrolysis Systems nabs $5.6 million to scale up lithium refining
What's the deal? Vancouver-based NORAM Electrolysis SystemsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → Inc. (NESI) has secured $5.6 million in government funding to scale up its electrochemical lithium refining technology. The company received $3 million from the Government of Canada through the National Research Council's Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) and $2.6 million from British Columbia's Innovative Clean Energy Fund.
The money will support development of NESI's next-generation refining platform, which it says will double capacity while cutting power consumption and plant costs.
"This funding helps accelerate a technology platform we believe is essential to the future of cleaner industrial processing," NESI president and chief executive officer Jeremy Moulson said.
Why now? Lithium demand is expected to drastically outstrip supply by 2035, according to the 2025 Global Critical Minerals Outlook. Refining remains one of the biggest bottlenecks in the battery supply chain, and governments are racing to secure domestic capacity for this critical mineral.
NESI, spun out of NORAM's electrochemical division in 2022, has already commissioned commercial-scale lithium refining infrastructure in Canada and Europe, with projects underway in South America and Asia.
What could go wrong? NESI is not alone in this space. Other Canadian companies, including Mangrove Lithium and Summit Lithium Technologies, are developing competing extraction and refining technologies. The lithium market is also notoriously volatile — prices have swung dramatically in recent years, which can complicate investment timelines and commercial viability.
The signal: NESI sits at the early growth stage, according to Dealroom, making this $5.6 million in non-dilutive government funding a meaningful catalyst for a company still scaling its commercial footprint. The bet here is on refining, not extraction — a less crowded but equally critical chokepoint in the lithium supply chain — and the backing from both federal and provincial programmes suggests Canadian policymakers see electrochemical processing as a strategic capability worth nurturing domestically.
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