Nth Cycle opens southwest Ohio nickel, cobalt production facility

Nth Cycle, a critical metals extraction and recycling company headquartered in Beverly, Massachusetts, has commissioned a 21,000-square-foot refining facility in Fairfield, Ohio. The facility will feature Nth Cycle’s electroextraction technology, which offers an alternative to pyrometallurgy operations, and will recover outputs of metal scrap, electronics and untapped mining resources and refinery waste to turn into critical metal products, including nickel and cobalt through Nth Cycle’s mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP) product.

According to a news release from Nth Cycle, the company’s MHP is produced from its electroextraction processor, which it calls, “the Oyster,” and yields what the company calls, “unprecedented” metal and mineral purity levels, with a high concentration of nickel hydroxide and cobalt hydroxide available.

RELATED: Investing in the future

“We are thrilled to welcome Nth Cycle to our community,” says Fairfield Mayor Mitch Rhodus. “Fairfield industries have been involved in automotive manufacturing since our founding, and we are excited to continue to be part of the innovation occurring with electric vehicles. Nth Cycle will be a great complement to our strong industrial sector.”

Nth Cycle says the Fairfield facility will ensure domestic production of MHP in the United States, which will help to serve original equipment manufacturers while producing a product of more than 90 percent nickel and cobalt. The company adds that its refining process could also reduce associated production of greenhouse gases by more than 90 percent versus traditional mining processes and fulfills the domestic sourcing and recycled content compliance requirements of the Inflation Reduction Act.

“As the world becomes increasingly reliant on the critical metals that are the backbone of an electrified economy, it’s clear the sourcing of those materials must be as clean and efficient as the future we imagine,” says Megan O'Connor, co-founder and CEO of Nth Cycle. “A clean, unfettered and cost-efficient supply chain of nickel and cobalt, or MHP, not only accelerates our path to that future, but it establishes the U.S. as a global leader in that movement.”