Groundbreaking marks start of Westwin’s plans to build a refinery in Lawton

Community leaders gathered in an open field in southwest Lawton Tuesday to break ground for the nation’s first nickel-cobalt refinery.

The ceremonial gesture was a commitment from Westwin Elements that the firm still plans to build a facility to refine high-demand metals in Lawton. The ceremony included Westwin Elements CEO KaLeigh Long and much of her staff, including technical experts who have designed and operated similar plants around the world but are now part of the Westwin family.

Tuesday’s ceremonial site was about 1 mile directly south of the Goodyear plant, a fitting backdrop for an economic development project that city leaders have said will have the most profound impact on Lawton since Goodyear opened. Tuesday’s ceremony also marked the first steps toward what will be a pilot plant, a scaled-down version of the full-scale refinery Westwin Elements plans to build several years from now.

The $10.6 million pilot plant will include the equipment necessary to refine nickel and cobalt through the carbonyl process, a refining technique that is more than 100 years old and a safe technique that will yield manageable amounts of waste that can be handled on site, Long’s technical experts said. Long said she plans to begin construction on the pilot plant by Oct. 1, adding some of the preparation processes — such as survey work — already have begun. That comes as city economic development entities and the City Council put the finishing touches on a plan to designate $3 million in upfront money and 40 acres of land toward the project.

Officials have said the pilot plant is necessary to provide the data required for a bankable feasibility study, a document Westwin Elements will use to prove its refinery works and one that will satisfy bankers who could make loans and investors who might provide funding. The pilot plant will refine nickel and cobalt (in a much smaller amount than what the full refinery will), and Long said there already is an interest in the material from those who must have the refined metals for their products, to include the U.S. military and those who manufacture batteries for electric vehicles.

Long said design plans for the pilot plant are done, and she anticipates Westwin will easily meet the timeline outlined in the amended economic development package: starting construction by Oct. 1 and finishing it by March 1, 2024. Long also said she anticipates completing the feasibility study in 2024, a step in the process that will allow Westwin Elements to build its full-scale refinery on a 480-acre tract in southwest Lawton that its owner (Comanche County Industrial Development Authority) will deed over to the firm as part of a $24 million local incentive package.

“At Westwin, we move pretty quickly,” Long told community leaders who attended a luncheon at Cameron University after the groundbreaking ceremony.

Long and Lawton Economic Development Corporation President Brad Cooksey said Westwin is bringing a wealth of knowledge to the refinery project by relying on those who have used such processes in plants around the world. There is no American expertise in those areas because there isn’t a nickel-cobalt refinery in this country, said Mike Cox, Westwin’s chief technical officer and one of those who has operated plants.

The officials that Long and Westwin Elements brought to Lawton for Tuesday’s ceremony included a delegation from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the bulk of the world’s cobalt reserves are found.

Mayor Stan Booker said the team of local leaders who have been working on the project illustrates the tenacity of Lawtonians, something Long said was one of the reasons she chose Lawton.

“We never give up,” Booker said, predicting that a decade or more from now, Lawton will realize just how special this moment in the city’s history was.