First domestic source of cobalt and nickel to be produced in new Ohio facility.

This week, Nth Cycle became the first company in the United States to produce recycled nickel and cobalt. Using its patented Oyster system to produce these battery metals at its 21,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Ohio, this system is able to upgrade black mass and nickel scrap into mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP), a key intermediate product that can be refined into nickel and cobalt for use in batteries.

The U.S. Department of Energy has identified refining as the most urgent gap in the lithium-ion battery supply chain, and legislation continues to be introduced to address the threat it poses to the country's economy and national security.

Nickel and cobalt are extremely desirable components for batteries as well as multiple clean-energy, electronics and defense applications, and have historically been obtained almost exclusively by poorly regulated means from countries in contentious relationships with the U.S., like Russia and China.

With 85% of the world's critical metals refined at large, centralized plants in China, the U.S. and Europe have a great number of the resources needed for the energy transition yet have no refining capability to separate and extract them for end-use. Rather, raw material is sent to China, refined there, and imported back, a reliance that creates a dangerous bottleneck that can easily threaten economies and national security.

To better address this critical gap, Nth Cycle has developed an innovative system that enables the refinement of critical metals directly at its facility, reducing the need for overseas processing.

The company's patented Oyster system – an electro-extraction technology that uses only electricity and water to recover these elements from recycled materials – provides a domestic and more sustainable alternative to high-pressure acid leach operations commonly used in places like Indonesia to extract nickel and cobalt from low-grade laterite ores.

Oyster, as its name suggests, is capable of efficiently filtering impurities and recovering a variety of metals, streamlining the entire refining process from recovery to final filtration and drying.

Implemented at its Ohio facility, Nth Cycle's Oyster serves as an independent test site for partners, helping reduce U.S. reliance on imports by promoting transparency and traceability in the refining process.

Already partnered with recyclers, manufacturers, and miners, Nth Cycle's market-ready Oyster system refines materials on-site using electricity and water, recovering critical metals from end-of-life batteries, scrap metal, and mined ore at the source. This approach eliminates the billions of dollars and lengthy permitting required for stand-alone refining plants, dramatically reducing transportation, time-to-market, cost, emissions, and waste.

Replacing traditional pyrometallurgy with clean technology, Oyster converts recyclable materials into a full spectrum of critical metals. Nth Cycle's system aligns with the Inflation Reduction Act and earned a $7.2 million tax credit for its Ohio facility under the Advanced Energy Project Tax Credit program.

With its innovative approach and focus on sustainability, Nth Cycle is positioned to play a crucial role in reshoring the critical metals supply chain, ensuring a more secure and transparent future for U.S. energy and defense industries.