R3 Lithium starts operations at Georgia recycled lithium carbonate facility

The company acquired the 154,000-square-foot facility in July 2026 and retained the leadership team that first demonstrated commercial-scale recycled lithium production at the site in 2025. R3 Lithium said it holds approximately $1-bn in signed offtake agreements, including with commodities trader Trafigura, and is investing to bring the plant to continuous commercial operation. The company projects the Covington facility will account to greater than 50% of total US lithium carbonate production in 2027.

The new funding will be applied to upgrade the existing lithium carbonate production line, which the company said was the first in the US to create 99%-purity lithium carbonate from 100% recycled content at production scale. The plant has 30,000-metric-ton shredding capacity and a 2,500-metric-ton lithium carbonate production line, with space allocated to an additional 2,500-metric-ton line.

R3 Lithium recovers, refines and returns lithium carbonate to the domestic battery supply chain through a calciner-based crystallisation and aqueous precipitation process that extracts lithium immediately from recycled black mass on a single site, without primary mining or non-domestic refining. Shredding lines create black mass from manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries; lithium is then extracted on-site, and the remaining concentrated metal oxide, containing nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite, is sold separately.

“This vertically integrated model gives R3 Lithium multiple revenue streams from a single feedstock and positions the company to supply both lithium carbonate buyers and downstream cathode material producers,” the company said.

A previous owner built the site at an investment of approximately $150-mn; R3 Lithium acquired it with no liabilities. The company’s broader development plan involves a network of lithium carbonate and black mass shredding facilities across North America and Europe, engineered in modular 5,000-metric-ton-per-annum units, deployed only with underpinning offtake agreements in place.

Ms. Linh Austin, President and CEO of R3 Lithium, said the US had spent years discussing critical mineral independence while most lithium processing remained overseas, and that the company now had a proven facility, an experienced team, and the capital needed to bring the line to commercial scale. Mr. Tim Wood-Dow, Battery Metals Trader at Trafigura, said the Covington facility addressed a gap in the physical supply chain by producing lithium carbonate from recycled feedstock domestically.

“Every battery already in service in this country is a lithium deposit. It is above ground, it is concentrated, and nobody has to dig to it. What has been missing is the ability to get lithium back out of it, at commercial scale, in the United States. That is the thing we have now demonstrated — not in a laboratory, and not as a pilot,” said Dr. Eric Gratz, CTO of R3 Lithium and co-founder of Ascend Elements.