ABTC awarded $144M DOE grant

Battery recycler and refiner American Battery Technology Co. (ABTC) and its subcontractor, the Argonne National Laboratory, has received a contracted grant award of $144 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that will be used to support the construction of ABTC’s second commercial-scale lithium-ion battery recycling facility. The contracted award will commence January 1.

ABTC, headquartered in Reno, Nevada, says the new facility will be capable of processing approximately 100,000 tons per year of battery materials from the company’s automotive original equipment manufacturer (OEM), cell manufacturer and community partners. The company adds that the facility will take in a wide variety of end-of-life and manufacturing scrap materials and will output battery-grade nickel, cobalt, manganese and lithium hydroxide products for sale to the North American market.

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ABTC entered into a strategic partnership agreement with BASF during the summer of 2023 for the purchase of its battery-grade metals. Headquartered in Germany, BASF produces cathode active materials (CAM) at its facility in Battle Creek, Michigan, as part of a broader collaboration with Nanotech Energy and TODA to establish a closed-loop solution for lithium-ion batteries in North America.

“We are extremely proud to have been awarded this highly competitive grant contract from the U.S. DOE, and it will directly support the additional capacity required to process the quantity of materials demanded from the domestic automotive and battery industry,” ABTC CEO Ryan Melsert says. “We are excited to be further scaling our internally developed recycling technologies and expanding domestic supply of unrealized, in-demand, recycled, battery-grade, sustainably manufactured materials.”

The company says it has leveraged its in-house research and development (R&D), project management and engineering team members—many of whom the company notes were previously members of the founding Tesla Gigafactory design and engineering teams—to scale and derisk ABTC’s commercialization of the second facility.

ABTC says the project will leverage multiple partners, including feedstock supplier and critical mineral product offtake partner BASF; global engineering firm Siemens; the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR); the Argonne National Laboratory ReCell Center; the Argonne National Laboratory Sustainable Transportation Education & Partnerships (STEP) department; and the South Carolina Electric Transportation Network (SCETNetwork).

Through the construction project, ABTC says it will employ a proactive, community-driven engagement model to build an energy equity, sustainable circular manufacturing ecosystem that aims to create 1,200 construction jobs and 300 operations jobs. The company says it will work in direct partnership between communities, educational institutions, industry, government, the national laboratory system and the next-generation workforce to support initiatives that benefit and strengthen local communities, including underserved communities.

“I’m personally very proud of our internal teams for the preparation of this proposal, performance during the due diligence rounds and proficiency in the rapid contracting of this competitive award,” Melsert says.