TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – In its effort to strengthen investor confidence, Canadian clean technology firm Orbite Aluminae this week announced the appointment of Claude Lamoureux, the inaugural president and CEO of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, to become chairperson of the Orbite board of directors.

Lionel Léveillé, who has served as the company’s chairperson since May 2008, would remain on the board as an independent member.

The Montreal-based firm on Monday also said that president and CEO Glenn Kelly would join the board.

Lamoureux led development of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan from 1990 until his retirement in 2007, moulding it into one of the world’s leading pension plans, with more than $100-billion in net assets and services to more than 250 000 plan members.

Lamoureux previously spent 25 years as a senior financial executive with Metropolitan Life in Canada and the US, rising through the ranks to head the company’s operations in Canada. He co-founded the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance in 2002 to work for improved corporate governance practices at Canadian companies.

He chairs the nominating committee of Investment PSP, and The Learning Partnership and is a member of the International Corporate Governance Network. He is a fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries and the Institute of Corporate Directors.

Orbite, focused on building the first phase of its high-purity alumina (HPA) plant in Cap-Chat, Quebec, by the end of the year fell victim to a budget blowout, rising debt, a falling share price and an unclear strategy. This resulted in a significant board shakeup starting with appointing Kelly as executive VP and COO in May last year, and culminating in Lamoureux’s appointment.

Kelly was subsequently installed as CEO following successful efforts to raise capital.

Orbite in December completed a $16-million public offering, supplementing a $40-million private placement with US-based institutional investor Crede Capital Group, which brought the total cash raised to $56-million.

This excluded the most recent $10-million equity investment by Investissement Quebec, which followed Orbite receiving a C$4-million non-interest-bearing repayable financial contribution from Canada Economic Development's Quebec Economic Development Programme in January.

An engineering review was started in January to evaluate and order the required long-lead equipment to complete the HPA plant.

Orbite in March awarded the contract to supply a 3 t/d calciner system for its HPA plant to Outotec of Germany.

At its Technology Development Centre in Laval, Quebec, Orbite performed numerous pilot trials in order to define the ideal conditions for the HPA synthesis to optimise product quality, production yields as well as operating costs. It also defined operating parameters for different feedstocks.

Orbite said that it continued to work towards a 12-month execution timeline, with hot and cold commissioning scheduled to take place during December, after which commercial operations were expected to start in January 2015, ramping up to nameplate capacity at 3 t/d during the first quarter of 2015.

In a recent interview, Kelly stressed to Mining Weekly Online that the company would now approach its initial plans to produce HPA, silica and separated rare earths in a more “prioritised” way, focusing first – and exclusively – on getting the HPA up and running, before scaling the operation up to 5 t/d, after which it would focus on rare earths extraction.

Orbite’s proprietary plant technology would produce HPA from aluminous clay, bauxite, fly ash and toxic red mud – without leaving waste. This technology is already drawing interest from companies around the globe, mainly to mitigate the environmental impact of existing concerns or to remediate old dumps.