Canada's Electra forms JV for black mass recycling

Canadian battery metals startup Electra Battery Materials will partner with economic development agency Three Fires Group to establish a lithium-ion battery recycling plant in Ontario to extract black mass that will be further processed at the former's planned refinery.

Indigenous-owned Three Fires Group will be responsible for raising funding for the JV — dubbed Aki Battery Recycling — and for picking the location of the new facility, while Electra will lend technical and commercial leadership, the company said.

The two entities plan to source end-of-life battery scrap from manufacturers to separate black mass at the site before it is sold to Electra, which will treat the mixture of cathode-anode material to produce critical minerals — such as lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite — that can be reused for lithium-ion battery manufacturing.

The planned launch of Aki comes amid Electra's phased push to develop a closed-loop supply chain for battery materials in North America. The company is focused on finishing its cobalt sulfate refinery in the near term before ramping its black mass recycling business.

The company also has designs to construct a nickel sulfate plant and a battery precursor cathode active material facility in Canada, while developing its Iron Creek cobalt-copper project in Idaho.

By Alex Nicoll