SGS and Carbonix Announce Definitive Agreement to Pilot and Independently Evaluate P180, a Made-in-Ontario Route to Lower-Emission Iron for Electric Arc Furnace Steelmaking

• Independent technical evaluation: SGS will conduct metallurgical testing, pilot-scale evaluation and performance assessments to establish objective data on P180’s technical capabilities.
• Made in Canada: P180 is designed to turn Canadian iron ore concentrate into hot briquetted iron (HBI) in a single facility.
• Hydrogen made on site: P180 splits natural gas into hydrogen and solid carbon instead of carbon dioxide.
• Indigenous-owned: Carbonix, headquartered at Fort William First Nation, developed P180 and owns its intellectual property.

LAKEFIELD, ON, November 11, 2026 /CNW/ – SGS (SIX: SGSN), the world’s leading testing, inspection and certification company, and Carbonix Inc. (Carbonix) today announced a definitive agreement to pilot Carbonix’s P180 direct reduction technology. Carbonix is an Indigenous-owned company headquartered at Fort William First Nation, Ontario.

Signed in June 2026, the agreement establishes the SGS-Carbonix pilot plant, a program led from SGS’s Metallurgical Centre of Excellence in Lakefield, Ontario. The program will evaluate P180 through extended operating campaigns, assessing process performance, product quality and key operational parameters. The resulting technical data will inform the assessment of the technology’s feasibility and potential scalability, including considerations for future demonstration-scale development.

SGS will upgrade and agglomerate the ore feed, oversee the reactor campaign, perform the assays and characterization, and report each milestone against defined acceptance criteria. The program concludes with a Pre-FEED study and a scale-up basis of design for the demonstration plant.

Since 1941, the Lakefield team has completed more than 22,000 projects for the global mining industry, taking processes from early testing through piloting and scale-up into production. The collaboration extends that piloting expertise into hydrogen-based direct reduction and methane pyrolysis, two lower-emission processing routes. It aligns with SGS’s Strategy 27 and IMPACT NOW for Sustainability, and with SGS’s expanding work in critical minerals processing.

“Independent validation is how a new process earns the confidence of the people who must finance, build and operate it,” said Stephen Mackie, NAM Vice-President of Metallurgy and Consulting, SGS. “For 85 years, SGS Lakefield has supported the development and evaluation of emerging metallurgical technologies through independent testing, technical expertise and pilot-scale programs. Our role in this project is to provide Carbonix with objective, technically rigorous data to assess the performance, operational characteristics and potential scalability of the P180 process. Through this evaluation, we aim to identify both the opportunities and technical challenges associated with the technology, providing a sound technical basis for informed decisions regarding its potential future development.”

Carbonix developed P180 and owns its intellectual property; SGS provides the independent testing and validation. P180 is designed to turn iron ore concentrate into hot briquetted iron (HBI), the clean iron feed that electric arc furnaces blend with scrap. It combines three steps that conventionally run at separate plants – upgrading the ore to direct-reduction grade, agglomerating it and reducing it to iron – in one facility.

P180 makes its own hydrogen on site from pipeline natural gas by methane pyrolysis, which splits methane into hydrogen and solid carbon instead of carbon dioxide. The hydrogen reduces the ore, and the process is designed to keep part of the carbon in the iron, where steelmakers can use it.

Integrated, sustained operation of P180 has not yet been demonstrated. Proving it is the purpose of the SGS pilot program.

“Whether we are talking to a private client or a government, they will trust our technology because it is backed by a credible, transparent program that gives them everything they need to judge P180’s performance and potential,” said Paul Pede, President and CEO of Carbonix Inc. “P180 did not exist when we first brought material to Lakefield in 2012; it came out of the work we have done here since.”

For Ontario, P180 targets a gap in the province’s steel supply chain. In March 2026, Ontario added high-purity iron to its critical minerals list, citing the shift to electric arc furnace steelmaking in the province’s steel mills. Those furnaces need clean, high-iron feed alongside scrap, and Ontario has no plant producing HBI today.

The program draws on the specialized metallurgical expertise at SGS Lakefield. Carbonix, an Indigenous-owned company based near Thunder Bay, aims to see the first commercial P180 plant built in Ontario, with site selection to follow the pilot results. Under its royalty model, partners would finance, build and operate P180 plants while Carbonix retains the intellectual property and a royalty on production.

For Canada, P180 is designed to add value to Canadian iron ore at home. In 2024, Canada mined 70 million tonnes of iron ore and exported 60.9 million tonnes, nearly nine-tenths of its output, all as concentrate and pellets rather than iron, according to Natural Resources Canada. The federal government added high-purity iron ore to Canada’s critical minerals list in 2024.

P180 is designed to convert that concentrate into higher-value iron in a single Canadian facility, strengthening domestic steel supply chains and building Canadian expertise in hydrogen-based ironmaking. The independent evaluation conducted by SGS will generate technical evidence to assess the feasibility, performance and potential scalability of the process, helping inform future decisions regarding its possible application within Canada’s evolving steel supply chain.

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