The small, sunny, riverside city of Trail, B.C. has long been known as the quintessential BC industry town. Mining giant Teck anchors the local economy, and has done so for generations. Teck Resources Ltd. has owned and operated a smelter in Trail for over 100 years, producing zinc, lead, silver and a vast array of other metal and chemical products. Teck has invested over $1.5 billion over the last 20 years including in significant environmental improvements in emissions (air quality, dust reduction, effluent quality), recycling zinc and lead, and land and water remediation.
After more than a century of hosting one of the world’s largest lead-zinc integrated smelters, the region surrounding Trail is a hotbed of metallurgical expertise and industrial activity ranging from scientific, environmental and engineering consulting, to electronics recycling, to purifying smelter byproducts to produce materials for the semiconductor industry and other thermal applications.
MIDAS is a public-private enterprise initiated by KAST, a non-profit regional economic development organization, and Fenix Advanced Materials, a private company with substantive experience in commercialization of metallurgical industry by-products. This partnership aims to leverage the region’s technical talent, commercialize new products and technologies through applied research and a value-add approach to smelter byproducts, and diversify the local economy. We believe industrial innovation and metallurgical sector spin-offs can create high quality, knowledge-driven jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities to be mined.
Applied Research and Development (R&D)
ACADEMIC PARTNERSHIPS:
Innovative businesses and startups need applied R&D (research and development) support to bring new ideas to life. Academic institutions need “real world” experience for their students (4th year undergraduates to PhD technical and business students). Through MIDAS matchmaking, entrepreneurs can access mad brains: students, faculty, PhD candidates (and their labs) at highly subsidized rates to complete research and product development. This saves money and adds incredible growth potential to companies.
The company retains the Intellectual Property (IP), can commercialize (profit from) the findings and the academic partner graduates students and can publish papers.
Read about our current industry project with Teck, Fenix Advanced Materials & UBC Okanagan Engineering.
Get some SMARTS with our partners at Selkirk College.
Want to validate your ideas and bring products/processes to market faster? Contact us!
Current MIDAS R&D program partners:
Smelter by-products
Work has begun to apply R&D and begin commercializing smelter by-products, or products outside the main business streams (lead, zinc, precious metals, fertilizer) of Teck’s local (Trail Operations) smelter.
For many years, our economic development partners have held a list of potential marketable products that could be made using non-core smelter outputs and the application of a great deal of careful technical and business feasibility evaluation.
This list will be analyzed with the most promising opportunities taken forward for further technical and business research, and those opportunities deemed most viable matched with entrepreneurs for market introduction.
Interested? Contact us.
