Cirba Solutions celebrates construction milestone at Ohio plant

Battery recycler Cirba Solutions, Charlotte, North Carolina, has marked a construction milestone in the expansion of its Lancaster, Ohio, lithium-ion processing facility.

The company recently hosted a “topping out” ceremony at the site to celebrate the final beam being put into place for one of the new structures on the expanding campus. Staff, construction teams and company leadership signed the beam before it was placed.

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“This beam represents everyone’s diligent focus on both advancing and moving this key project forward, which will greatly influence the North American critical materials supply chain,” says Troy Thennis, senior vice president of growth projects and technology at Cirba Solutions. “We’re able to celebrate this milestone because of the true collaborative effort we have with our engineering team, operations group and all our partners.”

The beam placement comes not long after the ribbon cutting ceremony held in August at the Lancaster site. The ribbon cutting was attended by representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC) who were able to see the facility’s battery scrap processing capacity firsthand. When construction is complete, Cirba Solutions says the new building will house additional processing capacity, expanding the overall site processing capacity to 600 percent from 2022.

More than $400 million has been invested into the site’s expansion, which includes more than $82 million in funding from the DOE as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Cirba Solutions says the expansion will create more than 100 new jobs and produce enough battery-grade salts to power more than 250,000 electric vehicle (EV) batteries annually.

Currently, the company says it has reached more than 25 percent of its hiring goal in Lancaster.

“Increasing lithium-ion battery processing capacity allows the U.S. to play a pivotal role in the build-out of the critical materials supply chain,” Cirba Solutions President and CEO David Klanecky says. “We are not slowing down, and this facility is direct confirmation of that and demonstrates how steel is going into the ground, ensuring global competitiveness to ensure we capture these critical metals domestically.

“And beyond lithium, the Lancaster, Ohio, facility will support a range of critical materials, including cobalt, nickel, manganese and other components that can be used over and over again, ultimately creating a more stable and secure closed-loop supply chain.”

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Once complete, the facility will produce battery-grade metal sulfates and lithium carbonate—raw material supply for precursor cathode active materials (pCAM) and cathode active materials (CAM) to support the manufacturing of new batteries.