ABTC closes on recycling facility purchase

Reno, Nevada-based American Battery Technologies Corp. (ABTC) has finalized the purchase of its commercial-scale recycling facility in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center in Nevada.

“The acquisition of this move-in ready industrial recycling facility has greatly accelerated our progress toward the first implementation of our integrated commercial-scale, lithium-ion battery recycling operations,” says Ryan Melsert, CEO of ABTC. “Within this facility we will have operations to receive a wide range of end-of-life and scrap battery materials and process these materials all the way to battery-grade metal products that we will sell to our domestic partners in order to create one of the first closed loop battery material supply chains within North America.”

ABTC also has released a statement providing additional detail to an alliance with TechMet-Mercuria it announced this March.

The partnership with the Europe-based firm seems tied to closing the loop on the sell side for materials ABTC will produce, with ABTC saying the partnership includes the manufacturing, sales and marketing of ABTC-produced recycled metal products, and a nondilutive investment into ABTC of up to $20 million through the prepurchase of these recycled metal products.

TechMet-Mercuria is a joint venture incorporated in Switzerland between Ireland-based TechMet Ltd., a private company focused on technology metals needed in the electric vehicle (EV) sector, and Mercuria Energy Group Ltd., a Cyprus-based energy and commodities trading company.

“There is an immense and immediate global demand for recycled high purity black mass materials from lithium-ion batteries, especially those materials produced in systems that have removed the majority of other battery components that would have become contaminants,” says Quentin Lamarche, co-managing director of TechMet-Mercuria.

“Through this strategic partnership the ABTC and TechMet-Mercuria teams are working to market, transport, and sell these intermediate recycled black mass materials to strategic metal refiners throughout the world."

“I am very pleased to kick off our strategic partnership with TechMet-Mercuria,” Melsert says. “There is a wide variety of value that can be recognized through the sale of these types of intermediate black mass filter cakes in such an immature market, and through our strategic business cooperation with TechMet-Mercuria we are able to leverage their team’s expertise and capabilities to ensure we have access to the highest tiers of global customers.”

According to ABTC, as it brings additional phases of its recycling processes online, it will transition to further processing its black mass internally instead of selling it as an intermediate product, and will instead manufacture its own battery cathode grade nickel, cobalt, manganese and lithium hydroxide products for sale to battery cathode refiners.