R3 Lithium has started operations at the former Ascend Elements battery recycling facility in Covington, Georgia, with plans to bring its recycled lithium carbonate line into continuous commercial production in 2027.

The new company acquired the 14,300m² plant from Ascend Elements through bankruptcy proceedings in July. Court records show R3 was the successful bidder for the assets, reportedly paying $3 million for a facility in which around $150 million had previously been invested.

Ascend Elements filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April. Documents filed at the time said the Covington facility had been unable to ramp lithium carbonate production to commercially viable levels.

R3 has retained several members of the former company’s management and technical team. Ascend president and chief executive Linh Austin now holds the same positions at R3, while Ascend co-founder Eric Gratz has become its chief technology officer.

The facility can shred up to 30,000 tonnes of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries and battery manufacturing scrap annually. Its existing lithium carbonate line is rated at 2,500 tonnes per year, with space allocated for a second line of the same capacity.

R3 said equipment upgrades were under way ahead of continuous commercial lithium carbonate production, which is expected to begin in late summer 2027. The distinction is significant: the company’s announcement described the initiation of operations, but the processing line has not yet reached sustained commercial output.

R3 uses a proprietary process to extract lithium from black mass

The plant uses a proprietary lithium-first process to extract lithium directly from black mass. Calciner-based crystallisation and water-based precipitation are used to produce lithium carbonate at the same site, avoiding overseas refining.

The remaining material is a concentrated mixture containing nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite, which can be sold for further processing.

Ascend demonstrated production of lithium carbonate exceeding 99% purity at the facility in 2025. R3 described this as the first production-scale US lithium carbonate made entirely from recycled feedstock.

R3 has not described the output as battery grade or published its impurity profile. Lithium carbonate suitability for cathode production depends on limits for individual contaminants as well as overall purity.

Austin said: “The opportunity was the asset. We’re doing the necessary capital upgrades to make sure it’s efficient in execution.”

The company has raised $15 million in Series A financing from investors including Integral GlobalTech Partners, TDK Ventures and Axial Partners. It also claimed to have inherited signed offtake agreements worth more than $1 billion, including an agreement with commodities trader Trafigura.

At full output, R3 expects the Covington facility to account for more than half of lithium carbonate produced in the US. It did not provide the domestic production forecast used to calculate that share.

The company plans to develop a network of black mass processing and lithium carbonate plants across North America and Europe. Future facilities would use modular lines producing 5,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate annually and would be developed only after securing supporting offtake agreements.

Ascend originally opened the Covington recycling facility in 2022 and subsequently installed its lithium recovery line. It had previously quoted shredding capacity of 30,000 tonnes per year and lithium carbonate capacity of up to 3,000 tonnes, compared with the 2,500-tonne rating now given by R3.

Written by James Snodgrass at Best Magazine
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