American Battery Technology

American Battery Technology Company (ABTC) provides domestically sourced battery metals through its three segments: lithium-ion battery recycling, primary metals manufacturing, and primary resources development. The company has developed a universal closed-loop battery recycling process that extracts critical materials, including lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese, from end-of-life batteries and purifies them to the same quality or even higher quality specifications than conventional materials sourced from mining operations. Apart from the end-of-life batteries from consumer electronics, stationary storage, and electric vehicles, the company recycles defects and waste from battery manufacturing facilities. ABTC’s recycling process utilizes an automated deconstruction process combined with a targeted hydrometallurgical, non-smelting process that deconstructs battery packs to modules, modules to cells, cells to subcell components, and then strategically sorts and separates those subcell components. The company claims its technology conserves natural resources including water, decreases air pollution associated with smelting, and increases operational efficiencies while generating less waste and higher material recovery rates in contrast to conventional recycling methods.

As of November 2022, ABTC operated out of a pre-commercial lithium-ion battery recycling pilot plant located in Fernley, Nevada. In October 2022, the company started construction of a USD 115 million first-of-kind commercial-scale facility to manufacture battery-grade lithium hydroxide from Nevada-based sedimentary resources, following a US department of energy grant. This facility would consist of three functional building areas totaling approximately 100,000 sq ft of floor space with 60,000 sq ft production space and was planned to start production in two phases; phase 1 and phase 2 in 1H 2023 and 1H 2024, respectively. In March 2023 , the company entered into purchase agreements for a commercial-scale battery recycling facility located in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center (TRIC), Nevada, to expand operations of lithium-ion battery recycling technologies. The company started operations in this facility in October 2023.  

Key customers and partnerships

ABTC is partnering with Novonix Group, University of Nevada, Reno, University of Utah, North Carolina State University, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory for the further development of R&D efforts. Furthermore, ABTC will rely on Dainen Material and Novonix Group for additional downstream material validation.

Funding and financials

ABTC’s most recent funding round was in September 2023 , when it raised USD 50 million in debt financing in the form of zero-coupon convertible notes from an institutional investor, to expand its battery material processing operations. As of November 2022, the company was yet to commercialize and generate revenue and was expected to begin by 1H 2023 after the commissioning of the first phase of the commercial-scale facility that is currently under construction.

In October 2022 , ABTC received a USD 57 million grant followed by another grant of USD 10 million in November 2022 , both from US Department of Energy, bringing the company’s total funding to  USD 74.2 million.