Project Infinity Matters for the Kwinana Cobalt Refinery
The Kwinana Cobalt Refinery (KCR) remains Cobalt Blue's primary focus. The project is well-advanced — site permitting is in place, feedstock contracts are secured, product from the piloting operations has achieved specification for pCAM production, and detailed engineering is ongoing. The final milestones ahead of Final Investment Decision (FID) are to secure offtake and assemble the right financing package. Those conversations are active, and progress is being made.
But while KCR moves through its final pre-FID steps, Project Infinity has emerged as an exciting growth workstream with important implications for Cobalt Blue. The initiative, developed through a consortium with Glomar Minerals, aims to build and operate the world's first commercial polymetallic nodule refinery in the United States.
Validating the Technology
For more than five years, Cobalt Blue has been developing and refining its proprietary hydrometallurgical processing technology at the Broken Hill Technology Centre. That work has been central to advancing KCR. The flowsheet has evaluated various cobalt feedstocks, and successfully separated cobalt from iron, manganese, copper, nickel, zinc, magnesium and calcium.
Project Infinity applies the proprietary flowsheet fundamentals to polymetallic nodules, a manganese-iron feedstock. The flowsheet will recover manganese, cobalt, nickel and copper. The scale up from KCR to Project Infinity is x20 on feed throughput capacity. Hence, the success of KCR opens up a much larger growth opportunity for the refinery technology platform into the USA, and strengths the investment case for KCR.
The Broken Hill Technology Centre
Opening the Door to the United States
The second dimension is strategic. The United States has made critical mineral supply chain security a national priority — and the demand for domestically processed battery materials is enormous, backed by policy frameworks, offtake appetite and funding channels that present a significant opportunity for Cobalt Blue.
Project Infinity positions Cobalt Blue at the nexus of forward leaning policy, capital investment, and sector leading technology. By establishing a processing presence in the US alongside Glomar Minerals, Cobalt Blue gains a foothold in the world's most active critical minerals market — opening doors to potential offtake relationships with American battery manufacturers and other end-use industries, while building a profile as a trusted, Western-aligned processing technology partner. These are relationships and channels that can benefit KCR directly.
CEO Andrew Tong at the Select USA Conference in May 2026
Two Projects, One Strategy
Project Infinity and the Kwinana Cobalt Refinery are complementary parts of the same strategy. KCR remains the primary objective. But Project Infinity validates the technology behind it, builds Cobalt Blue's international profile, and opens commercial pathways that ultimately advance the same goal: establishing Cobalt Blue as a leading critical-minerals processing company with a long-term role in the global battery supply chain.
Watch CEO Dr Andrew Tong discuss the latest progress on Project Infinity with Proactive in the interview below.