The National Assembly’s Committee on Science, Technology and Environment has released a draft law that would amend current laws and regulations. This is not the first time the Vietnamese government has used amendments to streamline the updating of its countries regulations when it comes to the handling and recycling of waste and products over the last couple of years.

I read a few of them, and upon what I have read, they have created a very extensive blueprint to build out an entire recycling infrastructure in the country from products to waste. Included in the current draft of amendments are changes to extended producer responsibilities (EPR) that put in place a recycling quota for lithium-ion manufacturers and those who import them for domestic sale.

Right now, the laws for EPR do not require a company to recycle any cells. With the new changes, they will have to recycle an 8% weight quota starting in 2029, and by 2031 the rate will be 15%. Many companies in the country have publicly stated that recycling volumes of this level are impossible for them due to the lack of feedstock, but there is a clause that allows them to keep carrying over the shortfall for 5 years.

There is, however, another problem when it comes to companies meeting this level of recycling throughput that the government is looking to mandate, and really it has to do with the lack of domestic processing and not the lack of feedstock. The proposed law includes a clause to allow for the export of the feedstock out of the country for recycling.

But by going down this path, it increases the costs associated with transport, which is one of the highest expenses when it comes to lithium-ion recycling. A draft study by SafeLoop, a European Union-funded research consortium, titled Cost-Performance Assessment and Circular Business Models evaluated several models for profitability in the EU for lithium-ion recycling and found that transport was indeed one of the key contributors to the overall costs of lithium-ion recycling.

To illustrate, the interim analysis has shown that the transportation of waste batteries to a recycling plant leads to significant logistical costs. This is because the batteries are classified as dangerous goods and, on average, are 16 times more expensive to transport than non-dangerous cargo

That is why I am sure R3 Lithium was in country having meetings with the government, and they are most likely the first of several other recycling/refinement companies that will be meeting with representatives of the Vietnamese government.

As for the rest of the changes they have done over the last few years, there was one item that was amended into their laws on environmental protection that caught my eye:

Recycled materials meeting environmental protection requirements prescribed by the Government used as production raw materials, fuels, and materials are not required to be managed per waste regulations.

Under the laws of many countries and even under international treaties, not only are end-of-life batteries considered hazardous waste, but even black mass, the intermediate product created from the mechanical stage, is classified as hazardous waste. Many countries, including the United States, are working to implement language just like what Vietnam has already added to their laws governing that waste.

For the United States, if the BRACE Act gets signed into law, it has already passed the House, it would allow lithium-ion recyclers to treat end-of-life and scrap as the valuable strategic asset it is, instead of being forced to treat it as waste under a framework built for disposal rather than recycling.

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Accurec hopes its new facility can help reduce that dependence. While the company does not claim its technology can solve Europe’s raw materials challenges on its own, it sees domestic battery recycling as an important step towards diversifying supply and keeping valuable materials within Europe rather than exporting them.

That is from a Euronews article about them and is something you do not normally see from lithium-ion recyclers. While it has become more prevalent for those, like Accurec, who have reached at least some level of commercial scale to acknowledge where they fit into the larger picture, most of the ones who are still at pre-commercial scale will instead go for the lithium-ion recycling is the way to eliminate the environmentally damaging mining and create a true green closed-loop economy.

All you need is recycling…

When I see that kind of propaganda, it is usually enough cause to ignore the company pushing that narrative. Lithium-ion recycling, or if you prefer to use the terms reclamation and refinement, is a loss prevention platform and a mechanism for maintaining material within what is called a regenerative industrial model where external inputs are supplemented by internal recovery and reuse.

S&P Global did an article the other day talking about the snapback on the price of lithium carbonate and how in August production was down 2.5% with 96,000 metric tons. What China produced in one month is over 9x what the United States produces in an entire year.

Recycling is the first step in building a domestic battery materials supply chain, and without it, the industry is bleeding material before it can even get fully started. But it will take primary sources to fill and build out the entire supply chain. And that will be the norm until the material already in the system hits a critical mass and is sufficient to meet the demand of manufacturers at such a volume that external inputs are then used as supplemental inputs; until then, recycling is a loss prevention platform.

The companies to watch are the ones who understand that synergy.

Another reason I really Accurec is for their platform, they have created a K.I.S.S. process for recycling lithium-ion, and the way they pre-treat the cells to make them open up without external physical force is a prime example of this.

In a first process step, the process chamber is evacuated while simultaneously heating the energy storage device to a first temperature level to such an extent that the electrolytes evaporate and, as a result of the resulting vapor pressure, the energy stores are opened.

They cook the cells until they pop open, that works so well that we can see a version of that process in several other platforms.

After the cells are opened up, they collect and then treat/scrub any of the harmful gases that are created when a lithium-ion cell is exposed to high heat, which are the exact same gases used to open the cells. Those gases are created from the decomposition of the binders and electrolyte, and this is one of the reasons why companies thermally pre-treat cells: it’s easier to recover a material when its no longer glued to a metallic foil.

As for lithium, they are doing an early-stage lithium recovery using roasting and carbonation, which can result in some of the highest lithium recovery out there when compared to traditional leaching, but by using carbothermic reduction and basic water leaching, most ESLR systems like this can obtain over 90% recovery of lithium.

Due to how lithium is the mobile ion in the cell, it can be one of the hardest materials to recover because it gets into everything and hides, forcing recyclers to hunt for it and try to pry it out.

The most important part of this article however is at the bottom where they talk about how Asian countries like Korea are willing to pay a higher premium for black mass because they are able to absorb that premium further downstream because they have the cell manufacturing infrastructure.

That problem is behind some of the reasons the Department of Commerce’s BIS black mass export rule was created with the requirement that 100% of the black mass be for use in domestic production. In the EU, since Korea is an OECD country, black mass producers can export black mass to them with very little regulatory obstruction. Requirements found in such things as the Basel Convention, even with black mass being categorized as hazardous waste, can be met, causing the critical materials in that black mass to be lost to the EU.

By including only exceptions to avoid harm to a company, temporary export for refinement, and the possibility that by restricting the export the rule inadvertently causes less critical minerals to be available in the US, the rule closes that gap that is found in the current set of EU rules.

This is also why I see US-based companies like R3 Lithium and American Battery Technology Company (ABAT) being more important in the short to midterm due to the shift from ternary chemistries in the US that would have been the main demand due to their use in EVs to lithium iron phosphate.

Both those platforms employ an ESLR component, and while they do end up with a lithium-depleted black mass that has to be dealt with, their platforms do extract the lithium without needing a full hydrometallurgical stage, creating less of a chance of that lithium being lost and making it available to domestic manufacturers without the entire periodic table of battery metals also being extracted.

There is also another company, and why them receiving a DOE grant makes a lot of sense: Nth Cycle. While their platform does create another intermediate, mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP), it does allow for the creation of a lithium precursor without fully committing to battery grade for the rest of the metals.

On a technical note, while ABAT is targeting a hydroxide instead of a carbonate, adding a carbonation reactor to the platform or a simpler precipitation method off their system 4 may be financially viable because it would allow them to tap into the growing demand for lithium carbonate due to ESS. If I remember right, some lithium carbonate production equipment was part of the insolvency sale of Lithion Technologies.

Before anyone goes, “Wait a minute, we need all of the materials in black mass” and you are right that the United States needs platforms that can extract and refine all of the battery materials from black mass, however, for now, if we can get a jump on the lithium portion, these companies can get the United States a bit further down the road when it comes to creating a domestic battery materials supply chain.

I also think this rule will make direct recycling a more attractive and increase funding for the tech and the companies behind it. Instead of a platform where the cathode material is cooked and/or leached in order to create black mass or a battery-grade material, is is instead cleaned and separated then regenerated to produce one of the true supply chain bottlenecks in the United States: cathode active material (CAM).

In the context of manufacturing scrap, which is pretty homogenous and a prime candidate for this technology, direct recycling recovers the material and produces new CAM in one platform.

That is one of the reasons why I am keeping a close eye on Princeton NuEnergy; another is I will be able to use a chocolate-covered cherry analogy when describing their regeneration process. But it is because of them and a few others that if I had to pick a state to relocate to in the battery belt it would be Georgia.

Upcoming articles:

I am working on two things, well three really, but the third is kind of dependent on correspondence.

First, I am almost done with the company research for the DOE grants that will be used to shepherd some technologies from bench to prototype or prototype to pre-commercial scale.

These technologies will be able to take waste streams, whether industrial or mining; in fact, one eliminates a waste stream while extracting the primary metal. But these new technologies plan to take waste streams, reprocess them, and extract the critical materials that can be found in them.

I have also added the content needed to understand where the United States stands when it comes to recovering materials from these waste streams. The main problem is almost everything regulation-wise that is in place now and has sufficient legal precedent is focused on primary sources, not secondary.

This regulatory gap is requiring new definitions of what a deposit is and new legislation to allow companies to process these waste streams and be profitable at the same time.

Second, I am still working on how automation and AI are changing the way lithium-ion is recycled, which is why I was reading about how companies are employing video game engines to help them create disassembly sequences for a traction battery when a digital twin is not available.

Another interesting aspect involves exploring a system that allows a platform to make educated estimates based on multiple inputs to find the most efficient way to dismantle a traction battery. This process relies on metaheuristic algorithms that use swarm intelligence; without a twin, trying to hard-code every possible sequence is just too costly and time-consuming.

And what is the third?

Actually, there are a couple, and once again they are dependent on correspondence. I have reached out to a few companies to see if we can get more details about what they plan to produce from secondary sources and how they plan to do it. If you are interested in doing an interview or just having a conversation, send me an email.

Finally, September is almost over, and the bulk of it for me has been relegated to doing research. In fact, I went out into the wilds just to get away from everything to focus entirely on research.

October I will finally have the data to provide the context needed to get out some very informative and relevant articles that look at where the industry is and how the bills and regulations being worked on this year will affect these companies.

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DISCLAIMER: This article should not be construed as an offering of investment advice, nor should any statements (by the author or by other persons and/or entities that the author has included) in this article be taken as investment advice or recommendations of any investment strategy. The information in this article is for educational purposes only. The author did not receive compensation, from any of the companies and or persons mentioned to be included in the article.

First, on the earnings call, Ryan brought up that they were debt-free twice; he only repeats something if he really wants to drive home a point. If you know anything about the senior secured notes and a lawsuit that was using that debt as grounds that the company was a grifter, you would know that for Ryan it is a major accomplishment to wipe that debt off the books.

But I think it is more than that, and I have a feeling we are going to see them release the framework for some debt that they are negotiating that is free of any baggage from the last few years and that is also not OTC levels of toxic. Debt is not bad, and for a company like ABAT, well-structured long-term debt non dilutive or at least if it is deferred dilution would be embraced by investors.

On the black mass export rule, as I figured since this is fairly new, it was a rush to submit, and now the Department of Commerce has to figure it all out; remember, they are using the DoD framework for a export restriction. But overall I am not really worried about it, but it does bring up something that I talked about in the chat during the call.

It was clear that the company was taking things slow, and to be honest, I think the Ascend Elements bankruptcy scared the bejesus out of the sector. Li-Cycle was kind of a given, but Ascend was a different story, and even with the brilliant legal moves by Ascend’s counsel, the company was still liquidated.

So I have a feeling ABAT was content to let the recycling vertical grow organically, use its profits to help expand and build out the platform, and let Tonopah work itself out. Grow but don’t overreach or over extend itself.

The BIS rule has changed that, and they are now at a crossroads: pivot away from recycling or at least downgrade its importance in the company, or make a push forward and get moving on battery grade. I think that ties into the debt that we may be seeing them take on.

Outside of that, the overall financials are for a speculative startup that is also a junior; unique but also nominal I think is the best phrasing to use here. Having a positive gross margin on black mass production is a great start, but do not expect that to stick around once they start into battery grade, well at least for a while. Once they start moving again, they are going to wreck that gross margin.

But that does bring up something that was kind of buried in the 10-K:

“an increase in legal expenses of $0.5 million related to site selection,”

Now then, I am sure they had legal expenses for the Ascend Elements bankruptcy; they were just trying to use a clear path argument to be declared the winner of the auction for the Kentucky property. But they also most likely had legal expenses for the lot next to the TRIC facility. But not $500,000 worth of legal expenses. Could they be close to picking a site for the second facility? That seems logical to me.

As for it being the Kentucky property from the Ascend bankruptcy? If it is, it better be Dollar Store prices and they are able to leverage a good portion of the DOE grant for it right off the bat.

The property and equipment table in the 10-K: before I was always saying cash COGS was where we needed to look at to see how the company was doing; now they have progressed far enough that table will be a good metric to see where they are at.

The big thing here is the construction in progress jumped almost $4 million while equipment dropped by $1.3 million. Speculation is they are working on getting new assets up and running, but also have not added enough new equipment, and depreciation is now eating into the value of that equipment.

This just supports the theory that they were content to let the recycling vertical continue operating while just adding upgrades for efficiency with no real push to expand it.

Beyond that, if you listened to the last earnings call, there really was not much new: some pomp and circumstance with the DOE visiting the TRIC facility, and he did actually go into some detail about NEPA, which was nice since the PR that they released talking about the final step needed to start the NEPA review, the BLM accepting the Mine Plan of Operations, didn’t include it all.

As for any recent FOIA requests, I think Tiffiany has gotten better at making sure that confidentiality agreements are in place, so there have been no new documents on that front.

The shareholders meeting is in November, so I guess we will talk about American Battery Technology Company again in November. As always, however, if you have a question send it my way. I may not be able to answer it or give you an answer that you want, but I will do my best to answer it factually.

If you found this article valuable, consider becoming a subscriber. The Critical Materials Bulletin is supported by readers, and for $5 a month or $55 a year you can help fund research that produces clear, no nonsense reporting that informs and advances the discussion on critical materials and battery metals.

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Alternatively, if do not want to commit to a subscription, you can instead buy Abe a treat or two. And in doing so you can help support my goal of taking the Critical Materials Bulletin on the road, to visit these facilities as they launch, and to continue my conversations with these companies in person.

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DISCLAIMER: This article should not be construed as an offering of investment advice, nor should any statements (by the author or by other persons and/or entities that the author has included) in this article be taken as investment advice or recommendations of any investment strategy. The information in this article is for educational purposes only. The author did not receive compensation, from any of the companies and or persons mentioned to be included in the article.

That rally ended in 2022, and that odd little company’s stock, Tesla, saw the worst year it ever had, with the rest of the EV companies that were along for the ride seeing the same. Even as Tesla continued to grow at an incredible rate and the narrative of an EV in every driveway in America was still alive and well, the market looked at EV stocks and decided they were overbought.

While the market soured on EVs, 2022 was also the year of a historic lithium rally, with battery-grade lithium carbonate soaring in the first quarter before hitting all-time highs in November and finishing the year up more than fivefold. While the investors retreated from EV manufacturers, lithium demand projections remained astronomical, sparking a hunt among investors to find companies in the lithium-ion supply chain instead.

Driven by a propaganda blitzkrieg, lithium-ion recyclers courted investors with a term originally coined in Japan for e-waste: urban mining. This catchphrase worked its way into pitch decks and analyst talking points, in an attempt to differentiate lithium-ion recycling from what most consumers viewed as a process that created a cheap and substandard product.

Through urban mining, recycling startups proposed that while manufacturers were waiting for traditional mines to get online, they could provide a faster and more environmentally friendly supply of lithium. But this concept wasn’t limited to startups. Even majors like Albemarle were pursuing urban mining opportunities.

This approach was only logical, as they and other miners were the ones who originally produced that lithium, and through recycling, they would be able to maintain control of that material almost indefinitely. That is why Albemarle in early 2023 announced a $1.3 billion Mega-Flex processing facility in South Carolina to handle diverse feedstock, including end-of-life batteries.

However, within just a couple of years of urban mining becoming the go-to catchphrase for startups, analysts, and the media, the realities of creating a domestic supply chain began to collide, and ambitious projects like the one announced by Albemarle were scuttled. Lithium prices collapsed, political winds shifted, and startups faced a much bleaker demand forecast.

Moreover, the technical complexity of refining battery-grade metals proved far more demanding than anticipated. Combined with state-by-state regulatory variations, rising construction costs, and long lead times on critical equipment, lithium-ion recyclers experienced severe headwinds.

Projects that were all but guaranteed a year before faced delays or were canceled altogether, and over the span of a year, three companies that had achieved some degree of success with the first stage of lithium-ion recycling closed their doors for good.

Li-Cycle filed for bankruptcy in May 2025. Lithion Technologies filed for creditor protection in October 2025. And Ascend Elements filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2026.

How a Pioneer Fell.

Ascend Elements, originally launched as Battery Resourcers in 2015, was a company built upon the early pioneering work in lithium-ion recycling of its founders. The original team filed their first patent in 2012, the same year that China concluded its Ten Cities and One Thousand Vehicles program and accelerated its push into electric vehicles and battery manufacturing.

By 2022, Battery Resourcers had created partnerships with cell manufacturers and investment groups who were chasing that EV in every driveway narrative. By leveraging its technology and the promise of bringing battery metals to the market faster than traditional mines, the company secured the capital needed to retrofit a site in Covington, Georgia for black mass production. Shortly afterward, it rebranded as Ascend Elements and announced plans in August 2022 to build the largest lithium-ion recycling facility of its kind in North America.

But this was not to be.

Legal complications and cost overruns at their Covington facility, construction delays and escalating expenses in Kentucky, and a management team that excelled at R&D but lacked the experience to transition from the bench to commercial scale, converged with a fundamental mistake domestic automakers had made. While trying to replicate China’s success with EVs, domestic automakers ignored just how China was able to create a thriving EV industry. Instead of treating EVs as entirely new platform they treated it as just another conventional vehicle, the result was unsustainable losses for each unit that rolled off a assembly line.

Automakers had no other recourse but to concede that the EV in every driveway was a narrative that, while attainable, could not be realistically achieved in the near term, and an aggressive expansion into the EV market was scrapped. Alongside a national election with a candidate who all but guaranteed a shift in policies away from EVs, domestic growth experienced its first real slowdown.

Deciding at the end of 2024 that a change had to happen, the Ascend Elements Board of Directors asked Linh Austin, who had joined the board in September of that year, to take a more hands-on role when it came to the company’s operations. This request proved to be just the beginning; by early 2025, he stepped into the role of President and CEO, and began to restructure the company from one that was focused on R&D with limited operations into one capable of achieving profitable commercial scale operations.

With this new focus the company successfully relaunched the Covington operations after an extended downtime for upgrades. That facility, originally built to produce just black mass, had been repurposed to refine battery-grade lithium carbonate using a proprietary process that utilizes carbon already present in the black mass. By eliminating the need for external carbon inputs, the approach proved both efficient and cost-effective.

But the financial damage already inflicted by changing markets and previous management missteps was just too extensive, and in April 2026, Ascend Elements filed for Chapter 11.

The legal team brought on to represent the company was able to take every objection presented to them and create reasonable, and even a few precedent-setting solutions that were able to satisfy the creditors’ demands, but the debt and the liens on facilities were too great, and the final outcome was all but unavoidable.

Over the four-month bankruptcy proceedings, the company sold off its main assets, from the Poland projects to the facility being built in Kentucky and the Covington location that had just recently restarted operations. What began as an effort to restructure the company ultimately shifted into a liquidation, and on August 17, 2026, a federal bankruptcy judge signed off on the final plan.

While the company that was Ascend Elements was gone, the team that successfully relaunched the Covington facility to do more than just create a recycling intermediate was able to purchase it out of bankruptcy, acquiring the facility free and clear of all prior liens and liabilities.

Led by Linh Austin, a veteran of the oil and gas industry, and backed by a venture capital firm specializing in energy transition technologies, the team launched R3 Lithium. With $15 million in Series A funding and approximately $1 billion in signed off-take agreements, the company has a single, unwavering mission: to build a domestic supply chain by refining battery-grade metals from recycled material, ensuring that critical resources are not lost overseas and securing a reliable supply for the United States manufacturing base for decades to come.

Analogies and Backgrounds

After noticing some job listings for R3 Lithium, I sent an email to them letting them know that when they were ready to exit stealth mode, I would love to do a follow-up to the Q&A I did in 2025. They replied back that they planned to release an announcement on September 10th and asked if I was aviable to do an interview with Linh.

What started out as a set of written questions that I sent to R3 Lithium, turned into a candid conversation that took place over the course of an hour-long phone call where I was able to ask Linh questions covering a wide range of topics, from the company’s goals to how the team’s background is uniquely suited to accomplish those goals.

CMB: Your background is in conventional energy production but instead of projects that create the fuel for power generation, you’re now creating products that are for energy storage. How is your background helping you move the company forward?

Linh Austin: I think it’s much more than myself, as you know, Mith. It’s a broad team, but the broad team comes from a background in energy, whether it’s refining or extraction. We don’t consider ourselves a recycler. There’s a lot of companies that do recycling in our market. Recycling as a technology in the U.S. has been around since the ’60s and ‘70s. It’s a very mechanical process.

We consider ourselves to be a refiner. That’s where I started my career, in refining, in oil and gas. We want to extract the critical minerals, and that’s exactly what refining does.

That’s where we are as R3 Lithium. We project that the Covington facility will account for more than 50% of U.S. total production of lithium carbonate in 2027. That’s from recycled content, produced domestically, at a single site in Georgia. We have the technology available to us that could be deployed for the other critical minerals, whether it’s nickel, manganese, and cobalt, but right now our focus is lithium. That’s our approach: do one thing really well, do it at scale, and then you earn the license to expand into other things.

Our first focus is being a highly successful and efficient lithium refiner. It’s the same mindset you see in oil and gas. A refinery brings in crude and separates it into different products. Are you going to be a good jet fuel producer? Gasoline? Diesel? That’s the discipline we’re applying here.

And much of the chemistry and equipment transfers directly over from traditional refining into metals refining from black mass. We’re not miners. We’re not the guys digging up rock and crushing it. That’s someone else’s expertise. My background in refining is exactly applicable to extracting critical minerals out of black mass.

CMB: What technologies does R3 Lithium have access to?

Linh Austin: We have access to the entire IP suite that the previous owners had, but the majority of that IP suite is related to the production of pCAM. What is specific that we’re focused on at the Covington facility is the extraction and refinement technology, particularly the refinement of lithium carbonate.

What we also believe is by being the only commercial-scale operations in the United States, we’re going to create a lot of our own unique R3 lithium IP. As you start to dial in different parameters, you just become more efficient. And that in itself generates a certain amount of IP because production scale accelerates learning. Learning then comes back into creating IP, and so it just becomes a really important loop.

CMB: Are you also exploring being a service provider instead of a strictly owner-operator?

Linh Austin: Right now we’re an owner-operator, but that’s an opportunity we can explore in the future. Our near-term plans are to complete the Covington facility and expand it. We currently have one line producing 2.5 kilotons of lithium carbonate. We’re planning to add a second line to reach 5 kilotons.

Given the demand profile for lithium carbonate in the United States and Europe, we see ourselves building multiple 5-kiloton platforms across both regions.

CMB: I was thinking about that modular system in the PR and how it’s going to affect how a site is classified, are they a large quantity generator or a large quantity handler of universal waste? Are you exploring how these units work within that framework?

Linh Austin: Absolutely. For us, it’s not just that, but it’s co-locating with partners who do some of that already. We see that we have an opportunity to be a very positive disruptor in terms of helping, as it were, to make that process much more efficient. As you start to co-locate these kind of things, the efficiency goes up, you can start to create an ecosystem around this.

For us, that’s where we see the longer-term play on this, is that you start to create certain geographical ecosystems across the country that drive a certain amount of efficiency in terms of collection, in terms of shredding, in terms of refining.

CMB: I was reading a study last night that once again reinforced that when it comes to lithium-ion recycling, even though you consider yourself a refiner, not a recycler, many of the costs will be the same, and the most immediate upfront cost is transportation. Creating geographic ecosystems is about the only way a domestic supply chain is going to happen.

Linh Austin:It definitely cuts down logistics and transportation costs. Right now, 95% of black mass gets exported, refined overseas, and then shipped back. That’s extremely expensive, especially when you’re shipping metals. And that’s where we change the economics.

CMB: One of the exceptions for the new BIS export rules allows for the export of black mass to be refined then re-imported back into the United States.

Linh Austin: The proposed export rule that you’re talking about, I think the spirit of it is right, which is, how do we keep critical minerals, located in the U.S.? But as you know, you’ve got to unlock the refining first.

The analogy is simple: if the U.S. produces all the oil we need but doesn’t have the refining capacity, it becomes a storage problem. You can’t make the jet fuel, diesel, and gasoline we use locally, you’re forced to ship it overseas and have it come back as the fuel you need.

CMB: That is an excellent analogy, in the United States much of the oil produced, the refinery infrastructure was not designed to handle it. How do you see R3 as part of the solution to that imbalance when it comes to lithium.

Linh Austin: Yeah, exactly. And so that’s where we see the shortfall in the supply chain, and that’s precisely the gap that we’re trying to plug and close. We’re not the only solution, mining is going to be an important factor, but we think we’re a quick parallel path that allows us to get to energy security much quicker. We can get a plant up and running in 24 months, and you’re talking about a typical mine from inception to startup, the minimum is 10 years.

CMB: With all these companies, including automakers, shifting to LFP, there is going to be more domestic demand for lithium than for nickel, cobalt, and manganese, and lithium carbonate is exactly what you guys are targeting as your primary revenue stream.

Linh Austin: Absolutely. I mean, and for us we don’t stop there, but that’s what we want to do really well, first. Do a really good job with lithium carbonate, and as LFP becomes a bigger and bigger part of the United States domestic portfolio, we’ve developed a flowsheet and pathway to process LFP as well. So for us, lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide are obviously very near-term things that we feel really comfortable about, and that’s where we want to focus our immediate attention.

CMB: I’ve written about this before in the context of why many of the lithium-ion recyclers struggled to get to scale. It’s so important to do one thing well first, then move onto secondary or ancillary streams. It seems the companies that failed tried to do too many things at once. In fact, that’s what happened to your predecessor.

Linh Austin: Northvolt, the same thing, they raised, what, $12, $14 billion? So it wasn’t for a lack of funding. I think it was just a lack of focus and just trying to do too many things and not having the appropriate background.

You don’t usually find plumbers leading these companies, who actually have the practical background to understand how to build the site, but that’s exactly what these companies need to be successful.

Side Note: Before I could ask my first question, Linh wanted to know about my background. It is my background that gives me a unique perspective in the lithium-ion industry. For several decades I worked as a commercial plumber and, when I needed a break, a few years dabbling in ICS and automation. This is why I am able to cover the lithium industry from a technological and operational angle. Once you understand how something works, the rest falls into place.

CMB: I think that’s one of the problems that we’ve been seeing, we’re now up to three North American lithium-ion recyclers that have gone insolvent.

Linh Austin: It’s unfortunate because there’s a lot of fantastic technology out there, and the challenge is deployment. What we have at R3 Lithium is a management team built for commercial scale. We’re not the team you bring into an R&D facility. We take commercialized technology and scale it.

We’re not the folks that take something from a test tube to a demo to a pilot. Can we do that? Yeah, but that’s just not our sweet spot. Our sweet spot is finding a stranded or capable asset and taking it from proven commercial scale, putting in the right automation, and then scaling that business quickly.

CMB: Can you walk us through what happens from a time a battery enters your facility to when it exits the processing train.

Linh Austin: We do some recycling and shredding ourselves, but again, we are primarily a refiner. But basically the way it works at our Covington facility, and I would really welcome you to come out there anytime you get a chance, because I think it’s always better to see it in person.

Whether it’s end-of-life batteries or gigafactory scrap, we take it through the front door where it is sent through our shredding operations, and there’s a wet and a dry shredder, and that’s really just talking about the electrolyte content.

Then that gets ground into something that’s called black mass. And in black mass is where you have all the critical minerals, cobalt, manganese, lithium, graphite, and nickel.

And what we do with our proprietary process, which is water-based, there are a few different processes on how to do that, but ours is we roast it through a calciner and then we float out lithium as a part of a water-based process.

Then we basically have lithium carbonate and something we call CMO, concentrated metal oxide containing the remaining metals cobalt, manganese, nickel, and graphite. Both products are sold into the same commodity market.

CMB: One of the things that is fascinating about your guys’ process is the way you create lithium carbonate, you’re using the graphite in the black mass as the carbon source to produce lithium carbonate. Usually companies inject CO2 into the system as the carbon source, but you’re using the graphite, which I would assume reduces your inputs.

Linh Austin: It does, absolutely. That’s how we achieve better cost-effectiveness. The fewer steps you take in the process, the fewer reagents or chemicals you use, the better your cost profile. Fewer reagents, fewer chemicals, fewer steps mean more efficiency.

And the reason scale matters is that in a commodity market, scale allows you to achieve certain efficiencies. From our oil and gas background, we know two things matter in a commodity business: cost and scale.

CMB: And how do you sell your CMO (black mass)?

Linh Austin: It’s sold onto the open market. It’s a commodity that we have an off-take contract for.

CMB: Do you have concerns about the BIS rule with that contract? Do you have a domestic path for your CMO, or are you looking for exceptions under the new rule?

Linh Austin: We have a domestic path for the CMO, and we want to see if there’s an exception available to give ourselves the most commercial flexibility we can.

CMB: What is the status of getting the necessary permits needed from the Georgia EPD for operations?

Linh Austin: The Georgia EPD, like any responsible agency, wants to make sure we’ve got sufficient controls in place, and we welcome that. We’ve had productive conversations with them, we’ve invited them to see the facility, and the process is moving forward smoothly.

CMB: Because of how RCRA works when it comes to lithium-ion related feedstock, are you planning to expand either to a brownfield or a greenfield site for storage of feedstock, or are you going to continue the storage methods you have right now?

Linh Austin: I can’t really comment on how we’ll handle that going forward. That’s something the team will evaluate. At this point, we’re not storing end-of-life batteries as part of our operations. Our platform allows us to take black mass directly into the kiln and extract and refine the lithium in it.

We’ll be doing shredding in the future, but not today. Today we’re focused on capital upgrades to make the process as efficient as possible. We know it can operate at commercial scale now, but we want to ensure it operates efficiently. Our entire focus is on efficient execution.

That’s why the facility is currently in maintenance mode with no active operations. We’re deploying a capital program to upgrade all the equipment with the automation, sensors, and everything else typical of refining technology. We expect the facility to be up and running by Q3 of 2027. Before then, we’ll have resolved how we want to handle battery storage.

CMB: So a ballpark estimate on when you are going to start ramping up production is Q3 2027?

Linh Austin: Q3 2027. It would be sooner, but as you know Mith, it’s the long lead times. That’s the biggest issue right now. Some of these things just take time to get delivered. Automation and equipment have long lead times. As we get those deliveries in, we’ll install them and start it up. Right now, that timeline is Q3 2027.

CMB: How are you incorporating automation and AI into your operations?

Linh Austin: A lot of the automation we’re going to employ is pretty standard in the refining world around controls, MOVs (Motor-Operated Valve) and things like that. The I/O we’re putting in is going to be pretty bog standard. Where the AI comes in is that once you have the breadth of data from execution, you can use that data to learn and be more efficient. It allows our operations to be more efficient. It allows our controls to be tighter.

But you still need a base set of data to employ automation and AI to support that, right? And today we have a limited amount of that data, but we’ll have more once we start up and run continuously.

CMB: Can you share what your processing costs look like?

Linh Austin: We believe our cost structure is highly competitive with any lithium carbonate producer in the Western market. The things we control, like labor, power, and water, we demonstrated last year and feel good about. As we get into continuous production and have the data to share publicly, we’ll be able to put numbers behind that

CMB: So you fully expect to be able to hit a positive gross margin within a quarter after operation starts?

Linh Austin: Absolutely. We absolutely expect that from this team. We expect that of ourselves. And that’s why we’re putting in the automation and controls we are, because we can operate it today, but we don’t want to operate inefficiently. The capital program is precisely to do that.

CMB: I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you this question. Is there any plans? I know R3 is brand new, but are there any plans to go public?

Linh Austin: We’ll pursue whatever capital structure best supports our growth and lets us build these facilities at the pace the market needs. Access to capital is important for us to scale the business as quickly as we think it needs to scale to support the critical mineral supply chain, and we’re going to be disciplined about finding the right path to get there.

CMB: I want to talk about the bankruptcy of Ascend Elements for a bit, however I don’t think there is a need to dwell on it to much, but the question I need to ask is what makes R3 Lithium different?

Linh Austin: R3 Lithium is not Ascend Elements 2.0. The technology at Covington was proven before we acquired it. That facility produced 99%-purity lithium carbonate from 100% recycled content at commercial scale. We acquired it for $3.5 million, free and clear of legacy liabilities, on a facility that represented $150 million in original investment. That fundamentally resets the economics.

We’re a very different company with a different vision, different values, and a different mission.

I would like to thank Linh Austin and the incredibly talented team at R3 Lithium for taking the time to talk to me and to answer my questions.

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DISCLAIMER: This article should not be construed as an offering of investment advice, nor should any statements (by the author or by other persons and/or entities that the author has included) in this article be taken as investment advice or recommendations of any investment strategy. The information in this article is for educational purposes only. The author did not receive compensation, from any of the companies and or persons mentioned to be included in the article.

I was reading about beneficiation of claystone in a lithium extraction train when I decided I needed a break, saw that I had a LinkedIn notification, and checked to see what slop someone sent me.

And it was not slop but spam about being part of some company’s board, but as always I like to scroll before I close LinkedIn, and found a post about an EV that caught fire in a parking garage.

The top comment was from an actual Tesla employee whose job is dealing with fire safety, and she wondered if there was a problem with the sprinklers.

Predictably, this drew out all the lurkers with impressive titles who probably just harass actual engineers while pretending to be one, replying about the use of water on an EV fire.

For those who don’t know, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) recommends using water to put out an EV fire.

Anyways, I pulled a link of a UL report, the same one I linked in another note, and used it as a polite way to show one particular offensive participant of the conversation how he was wrong. But while I was looking up a section in that, a word caught my eye: smoldering.

That word for some reason caused another report that I had read about headlines and lithium-ion recycling to pop back into my head, specifically a section about black mass and dust explosions.

The EPA has 4 hazard codes that they apply to waste because they typically exhibit one of the four regulatory characteristics of hazardous waste

• Ignitable Waste

• Corrosive Waste

• Reactive Waste

• Toxicity Characteristic Waste

Black mass is classified as hazardous waste even though it is no longer considered a battery because it is ignitable and reactive and in some states they also include Toxicity due to the metals it can contain, but the common thinking, and the one I see in reports and studies, is because it is explosive due to being a fine dust.

Black mass is often referred to as a powder, but it can also be described as a fine dust one company even calls it a sand. This means it is made up of small particles of different materials, ranging from cathode material and actual foils to graphite. While it may seem counterintuitive, the smaller the particle, the more surface area oxygen has to wrap around. Once that dust is exposed to a high enough temperature, an explosion occurs.

For some reason, however, the word smoldering was stuck in my head like an earwig, and while I was not sure why, I knew it had to do with black mass and not the EV.

So I did a Google search for smoldering and black mass and wouldn’t you know it, I found this: Smoldering fire and explosion hazards of black mass in the lithium-ion battery recycling industry.

While black mass can technically be categorized as a dust, a dust explosion from ignition is not as prevalent as other studies have suggested. I am not surprised by this, since I am still seeing studies that include the 5% recycling myth.

The preliminary results show that the smoldering fire hazard is high, while the dust explosion hazard is low for representative black mass samples. Moreover, the safety concern of flammable gases (e.g., H₂ and NH₃) and/or volatiles released by the bulk black mass samples in enclosures cannot be ignored, especially when moisture and/or water is present. This raises another practical question: Can a sprinkler system be used for smoldering fire suppression of black mass?

A lower quality black mass can contain leftover chemicals from the breakdown of the electrolytes, and if the aluminum percentage is high enough, which in low quality black mass can be rather high along with copper, that aluminum could react to moisture, and this reaction can generate enough heat that, along with the leftover electrolyte chemicals, can create smoldering super sacks of black mass.

While there is a present and on going concern about explosions and a conflagration-style event, recent studies are showing that a slow, smoldering of the black mass that can creep undetected from one super sack to the next may be the main cause of concern. This heat can eventually build up enough to catch surrounding materials on fire. The less efficient a black mass production platform is, the higher the danger of storing black mass can be.

The negatives of high levels of aluminum in black mass are well documented. During leaching, aluminum can trap transition metals in the solid residue, preventing them from dissolving into solution. This cuts recovery rates and drives up operating costs, and is why companies are devloping and deploying far more efficient front ends to their recycling platforms, not only for cost-saving measures but also as can be seen from that report the added benefit of creating a safer intermediate.

I was once asked for a list of research materials by someone who wanted to learn about lithium-ion recycling. My response was to Google something you want to understand, read about it, and I can guarantee before you finish that paper you will discover another topic you will want to understand.

Before you know it, it’s seven years later and you are still learning something new.

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DISCLAIMER: This article should not be construed as an offering of investment advice, nor should any statements (by the author or by other persons and/or entities that the author has included) in this article be taken as investment advice or recommendations of any investment strategy. The information in this article is for educational purposes only. The author did not receive compensation, from any of the companies and or persons mentioned to be included in the article.

The judge approved the final plan, which is the plan to close out and liquidate Ascend Elements. What started out as a Chapter 11 case to reorganize and save the company ended up shifting into a full liquidation after its major operating assets were sold off.

In plain terms, a Chapter 11 usually tries to keep a business alive, but when that fails, the company sells off everything it owns piece by piece and distributes the cash to pay off creditors before shutting down entirely.

This has been an action-packed 4 months and this case has taken on a number of twists and turns. You never know which case is going to present more complicated issues and this case had many moving pieces and very complicated issues. Very large disagreements between certain stakeholders proposed sales of assets that were heavily contested and changes to those sales and ultimately the approval of certain asset sales after changes to procedures in order to ensure due process to all parties. ~ Christopher M. Lopez United States Bankruptcy Judge.

Asset Sales:

• Poland and Intellectual Property: Sold to Bluegrass Infrastructure Partners for $3.0 million in cash plus a $98.0 million credit bid, closing on May 26, 2026.

• Hopkinsville Facility (Apex 1): Sold to Turner-Kokosing Joint Venture (TKJV), closing on June 10, 2026, with a total claim reduction of $50.0 million (including a $40.0 million waiver at closing).

• Covington Facility (Apex 0): Sold to R3 Lithium for $3.0 million in cash, approved on June 30, 2026.

Debt Outcomes:

• Secured Notes Extinguishment: The $20.0 million senior secured notes and $83.1 million junior secured notes were fully satisfied through credit bids and asset sales, leaving zero remaining funded debt from the noteholders.

• General Unsecured Claims (Class 3): Totaled at approximately $149.6 million, with projected recoveries estimated between 0.0% and 0.4% through a GUC Trust holding residual assets and retained litigation causes of action.

Settlements:

• Department of Energy Settlement: Resolves $15.9 million in potential reimbursement liability for $7.5 million, satisfied entirely via setoff against remaining grant closeout funds rather than an out of pocket cash payment.

• AMCON Lien Dispute: Resolved via a stipulation approved on August 10, 2026, granting a $1.175 million secured claim paid from the Covington proceeds escrow and waiving an 8.7 million dollar unsecured claim.

There were two objections to the final plan.

One was by the U.S. Trustee, a federal official overseeing bankruptcy cases, who argued that the special committee’s actions overlapped those of the trustee’s. The judge dismissed the objection, ruling that the committee’s actions were appropriate and justified in this case.

The second one was by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division and they had an objection due to the fact they want to rollback the sale order of the Covington facility to R3 Lithium, due to them failing to include a financial provision in it. Several times the Judge stated he was confused on why this was an issue being brought before him, and he was not the only one.

Nowhere in the final plan being ruled on today was there anything to do with the sale order of the Georgia facility to R3 Lithium besides being included as background information. In fact, the judge asked where the Georgia lawyer was getting the deadlines they were listing, and she responded it was in the sale order. The judge had to explain that he was there to make a ruling on the final plan and that if the Georgia EPD wanted to contest the sale order, that was a fight for another day.

Lawyers on both sides, the debtors and creditors, agreed that what Georgia was trying to do amounted to an improper collateral attack on the previous order. I had to look it up, and in plain terms, a collateral attack means trying to undo a past court ruling through an unrelated proceeding instead of appealing it properly the first time.

The lawyer for Georgia finally acquiesced that there was nothing in the final plan dealing with what they were objecting to, even after filing a redline that day attempting to insert new financial provisions. The judge did agree that Georgia could retain the right to pursue the matter in a hearing specifically dedicated to that sale order, reinforcing what he said earlier: that was a fight for another day.

It looks like R3 Lithium is going to have to battle it out with the state of Georgia. The state is refusing to transfer or issue a new hazardous waste variance, which was supposed to be part of the original sale order. This variance is what allows the Covington facility to legally operate as a verified reclamation facility for recycling lithium-ion batteries under the Georgia Hazardous Waste Management Act.

The whole dispute likely comes down to not including some financial assurances, such as closure bonds and letters of credit needed to cover environmental compliance and facility closure costs.

Without that variance sorted out, which the judge made clear during today’s hearing that he expected to have in front of him so he could rule on the objection and enforce the sale order, R3 Lithium legally cannot operate as a hazardous waste recycler in the state, except perhaps in an interim status due to the deadlines the Georgia lawyer was referencing.

But once again, that is something that no longer concerns the company formerly known as Ascend Elements, because with this order, they are no more.

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DISCLAIMER: This article should not be construed as an offering of investment advice, nor should any statements (by the author or by other persons and/or entities that the author has included) in this article be taken as investment advice or recommendations of any investment strategy. The information in this article is for educational purposes only. The author did not receive compensation, from any of the companies and or persons mentioned to be included in the article.

One of them is that a lithium-ion recycler cannot store its feedstock, the end-of-life and production scrap, at the same location that they process it. Unless, however, the company also has a permit from the EPA as laid out in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), a federal law governing hazardous waste.

That permit is referred to as a RCRA Part B permit and would allow them to run a location as a Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facility (TSDF). Such a permit exempts the recycling equipment and allows them to store the feedstock free of most time constraints.

But what one company, American Battery Technology Company, had been doing is using what is called a just-in-time schedule where in Nevada from the time they receive the material to the time the material is processed has to be 24 hours or less.

The EPA classifies lithium-ion cells that are being transported for the purpose of recycling as hazardous solid waste because they exhibit specific characteristics such as they are ignitable or they are reactive. Now, there is an alternate set of rules known as universal waste management, which is meant to promote recycling by lowering the operational and storage burdens for what are classified as large quantity handlers of universal waste (LQHUW).

These LQHUW can collect, sort, store, and can even remove the electrolyte if the cell is closed back up, without falling under the normal hazardous solid waste regulations. But that all stops the moment the feedstock hits the receiving bay at the recycling facility.

This is why state and federal authorities require lithium-ion recyclers to obtain a TSDF permit, though whether the state environmental agency or the EPA issues that permit depends on state authorization, as some states defer to the EPA or share jurisdiction under RCRA.

However, while federal regulations do not specify an exact time allowed to hold the feedstock prior to processing once it is accepted at the facility, a regional EPA office or a state agency through their interpretation of federal codes may establish a site-specific allowable holding time for storage of that feedstock before it has to be processed.

That is the just-in-time setup.

Back to the topic of ABAT and why I used the phrasing “had been doing” because that looks to have changed when ABAT purchased another location in March 2026, which makes them the owners of four locations in Nevada that falls under the company’s recycling vertical umbrella.

There is, of course, the main location referred to as the TRIC facility, along with an empty lot on Sydney Drive by one of the security gates for Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, the property in Fernley that was under construction as the original site for the company’s recycling operations before they purchased the TRIC location. Now the company has this new property and it is located right next door to the TRIC facility.

A screenshot from google maps.

They bought this location for $2 million and it that looks to be part of a larger complex that also has a battery wholesaler.

This location has the EPA designation as “ABTC Peru Drive Feedstock Storage” with the EPA Registry ID: 110072137004. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is the code used by federal agencies to classify business establishments by type of economic activity, and for this location it is 562112 Hazardous Waste Collection.

This would allow them to move away from the just-in-time schedule for at least what is considered non-damaged, defective, or recalled material, which the modules from the Moss Landing site would be classified as, so for regular feedstock this location could in theory give them some breathing room.

Since the NAICS code is 562112. These are the activities that would be conducted at that location:

• Hazardous waste collection services

• Radioactive waste collecting and/or local hauling

• Hazardous waste hauling (local)

• Operation of hazardous waste transfer stations

• Collection and transportation of industrial hazardous waste

• Medical and healthcare hazardous waste collection services

This location does not have a RCRA Part B permit used for TSDF, which would use NAICS code 562211 Hazardous Waste Treatment and Disposal. Instead, since it has NAICS code 562112, Hazardous Waste Collection, it falls under different usage rules, ones that only allow temporary storage.

Under approved activities like hazardous waste collection services and collection and transportation of industrial hazardous waste, the facility at 3400 Peru Dr. operates under 40 CFR 263.12(a). This RCRA provision codified into federal law allows a transporter to store hazardous waste in containers at a designated transfer facility for 10 days or less without triggering full TSDF permitting and other related regulatory provisions outlined under RCRA.

If material remains on site for more than 10 days, the location becomes subject to full TSDF requirements unless an accumulation time limit extension is granted by the EPA or the state.

Ten days is better than 24 hours, and this also gives them the ability to better coordinate with OEMs to make sure that they can receive their material in a more timely manner.

This would also indicate that at current operating throughput, a $2 million expenditure was worth adding 10 days of storage to the Nevada recycling vertical. This may have been a direct result of the volume of material from Moss Landing, or it might be that they were unable to fully meet their clients’ needs with a just-in-time schedule due to capacity constraints, and that storage allows more flexibility for their clients and for the company to better meet their recycling needs.

One of my concerns was that due to capacity constraints, ABAT might struggle to expand and grow their clientele, but adding this storage could be part of the solution. As I have said before, as problems go, having more feedstock than you can process is not a bad one to have.

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DISCLAIMER: This article should not be construed as an offering of investment advice, nor should any statements (by the author or by other persons and/or entities that the author has included) in this article be taken as investment advice or recommendations of any investment strategy. The information in this article is for educational purposes only. The author did not receive compensation, from any of the companies and or persons mentioned to be included in the article.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), an agency in the Department of Commerce, issued a new temporary rule, the Directive Allocation Order and Additional Requirements for Recoverable Critical Minerals and Materials, which provides a legal definition of black mass within the context of the rule.

For purposes of this Directive Allocation Order, ‘black mass’ means any shredded lithium-ion battery scrap that contains cathode material (which may include lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese), anode material (graphite, silicon) or other residual battery cell materials.

While that definition explains what black mass is made of, it doesn’t show why it’s critical to the domestic supply chain or where and how it fits into the lithium-ion industry.

A recycler’s feedstock comes from two main sources: end-of-life batteries, or manufacturing scrap generated during production. Manufacturing scrap is further split into two categories: dry scrap (foil clippings and components produced before electrolyte is added) and wet scrap (material rejected after the electrolyte is injected).

Unlike what the general public believes, while the electrolyte contains lithium, it is not the lithium itself that poses the highest safety risk during recycling. Rather, the electrolyte itself does. When heated or exposed to air and moisture, the chemicals in the electrolyte break down into toxic, flammable gases. The severity varies based on chemistry and state of charge.

High-nickel versus lithium iron phosphate chemistries produce different gas profiles. State of charge determines not just how much gas is produced, but which gases and at what concentrations, with specific test data showing that lower state of charge thresholds in chemistries like lithium iron phosphate can yield distinct toxic gas concentrations compared to higher-charged ternary cells.

However, you can’t just crack open a battery, dump the contents into a bucket, and feed the materials into a lithium-ion production line. The materials are physically and chemically locked into complex structures. That is where the mechanical component of lithium-ion recycling comes into play. After disassembly, the cells are shredded, and that is when the black mass is created.

But why shred?

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Instead of remitting payment, Tysadco filed counterclaims in an effort to shift its losses back onto ABAT. Tysadco alleged that ABAT and its CFO, Jesse Deutsch, fraudulently coerced them into executing those agreements by pointing to an October 2023 text message where Deutsch remarked he would “cover the losses later” on prior trades.

Beyond claiming ABAT reneged on an oral promise to “make Tysadco whole,” Tysadco leveled counterclaims of fraud, negligent misrepresentation, and Nevada state securities violations, arguing ABAT used their capital to quietly satisfy obligations to third party funds like High Trail Capital and H.C. Wainwright.

In late 2023, ABAT issued senior secured convertible notes to High Trail Capital to access up to $51 million in debt financing, receiving $37 million across two initial tranches. These notes carried toxic liquidity thresholds and debt covenants that created ongoing pressures for day to day operations. Tysadco seized on this dynamic, alleging that Jesse Deutsch made informal, unwritten promises to secure Tysadco’s capital quickly to avoid a covenant default.

However, ABAT systematically eliminated that debt position over the following years. After paying down $31.5 million in cash toward the principal, the company extinguished the remaining $8 million of the High Trail 2024 Notes through equity conversions in mid 2025, issuing roughly 9.5 million common shares across July and August.

By converting those final notes, ABAT released restricted cash reserves, removed High Trail’s restrictive covenants, and completely cleared the debt from its balance sheet. This successful payoff neutralized Tysadco’s argument that ABAT was facing an unmanageable debt crisis or engaging in a fraudulent scheme to keep the lights on.

On August 5, 2026, Chief U.S. District Judge Miranda M. Du ruled in favor of ABAT in its original lawsuit, ordering Tysadco to pay $1,436,392.80 for breaching its stock purchase agreements and dismissing Tysadco’s counterclaims of fraud and misrepresentation.

Under Nevada law, unwritten side communications and informal text exchanges cannot modify fully integrated, written contracts that explicitly place market risk on the buyer. ABAT exposed the core contradiction in Tysadco’s stance by showing how Tysadco portrayed its owner as a savvy, decades-experienced trader while simultaneously claiming he was bamboozled into taking on unwritten downside risks.

Furthermore, by eliminating those debts, ABAT demonstrated to the court that its liabilities were far from unmanageable, leaving the company with no share-related debt beyond standard warrants and employee share-based incentives.

This closes out the primary growing pains era that the company experienced as it transitioned away from being an OTC listed speculative play. Early on, the only available financing came through toxic notes, a practice common with OTC stocks, alongside reliance on relationships with entities like Tysadco that ultimately resulted in massive dilution for retail investors.

Now, the company has been added to the Russell Indexes and several ETFs, sitting at around 46% institutional ownership according to Fintel, demonstrating its maturity in acquiring capital through the equity market.

I want to give a shout-out to the Tinfoil Hat and Mayonnaise Society (I know a silly name but long term investors will get the inside joke), who over the last 4-5 years have worked to help keep retail investors of ABAT informed. This is an example of the news they make me aware of.

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DISCLAIMER: This article should not be construed as an offering of investment advice, nor should any statements (by the author or by other persons and/or entities that the author has included) in this article be taken as investment advice or recommendations of any investment strategy. The information in this article is for educational purposes only. The author did not receive compensation, from any of the companies and or persons mentioned to be included in the article.

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Section 1412 of the FY2026 NDAA expands the Strategic Materials Recovery and Reuse Program for recycling and recovery of critical minerals. The DOI issued a Secretary’s Order to streamline regulations on recovery from mine waste. All of this points toward material recovery as part of the strategy to reduce the dependence on foreign critical minerals.

When it comes to the Department of Energy, the agency long positioned as the primary source of funding and guidance for critical materials, is now taking a back seat. They are providing funding to expand and develop materials from secondary sources, but most of this targets new technologies and pilot programs rather than commercial scale facilities.

After Ascend Elements and a few other projects, it seems that outside of nuclear and fossil fuels, the current administration’s DOE has lost its appetite for funding projects that utilize unconventional resources.

But beyond funding, for lithium-ion recycling, there is a problem buried in federal waste regulations, Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) stated:

End-of-life batteries and scrap materials are largely sent overseas, often to China, for processing. Our own regulatory scheme under RCRA is contributing to this.

The way these rules are written, they inadvertently promote, due to financial reasons, the export of much-needed battery materials instead of allowing them to be recovered and reused in the US, creating both economic and national security concerns.

This is a real-world example of how one outfit, American Battery Technology Company, is running into that regulatory wall.

ABTC:

We had asked about requirements for a destination facility on our last call, is there any further information on this process?

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First, what do they do? Well, this links back to something I posted about last week. Blue Whale Materials produces black mass from end-of-l…

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As described in g…

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As …

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Turner…

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