American Battery Technology Company (OTCQB:ABML) CEO Ryan Melsert has told shareholders that the company is “excited” to now be constructing its first pre-commercial integrated facility.
In a letter to shareholders, Melsert said that over the past two years, ABTC has been able to complete the analytical modeling and empirical validations portion of the design cycle for its lithium-ion battery recycling technologies, and has progressed to the integrated demonstration and piloting stage.
“We are excited to now be constructing our first pre-commercial integrated facility to be able to operate these systems in a continuous and economically competitive fashion. This facility is designed to produce nearly every component needed to manufacture a new lithium-ion battery cell, and to demonstrate the true closed loop environment enabled by the operations of this recycling facility,” Melsert said in the letter.
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“Over the past several months, we purchased a greenfield site in Northern Nevada, completed the construction design of the facility, built the underground utilities and poured our concrete foundations, and over the coming months we are scheduled to be completing the physical construction of this facility and then installing, commissioning, and ramping the throughput of the recycling processing train throughout the year.”
The ABTC boss said that the firm has also been developing “a first-of-kind set of technologies” for the low environmental impact manufacturing of battery grade lithium hydroxide from surface sedimentary resources located in Central Nevada.
“These lithium bearing resources have been deemed unconventional to date, with conventional processing trains not able to extract, purify, and manufacture battery grade products in an economically competitive fashion,” said Melsert. “However, throughout the past year, the ABTC team and its partners have been developing a first-of-kind set of technologies specifically tailored for this unique resource and validating these operations at the bench scale.”
The Reno, Nevada-based critical minerals manufacturing and lithium-ion battery recycling company has recently won a competitive grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE) to support its efforts to construct a multi-ton per day integrated field demonstration system to continue the developmental ramp up of these technologies.
“Once these field demonstrations are proven successful, in cooperation with our partners we will proceed to the commercial scale construction of the integrated refinery operations, and to support these efforts we have recently secured over 8,500 acres of these surface sedimentary lithium-bearing land and mining leases in the area,” revealed Melsert.
The ABTC boss added that at the conceptual design stage, the firm has been “trialing new processes” for the manufacturing of nickel and cobalt products from Nevada-based resources.
“By working with the US Advanced Battery Consortium, comprised of General Motors, Ford, Stellantis, and the US DOE, we were able to foster a relationship and win a grant for the development and commercial scale demonstration of our integrated battery recycling technologies,” added Melsert.
The full shareholder letter can be read here.
Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com
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