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Last month, R3 Lithium initiated operations to produce lithium carbonate from 100% recycled battery materials at North America’s first proven commercial-scale lithium carbonate recovery facility in Covington, Ga.
The company, which also secured $15 million in Series A funding from investors, acquired the 154,000-sq.-ft. facility in July 2026 and retained the leadership team that first demonstrated commercial-scale recycled lithium production at the site in 2025. R3 Lithium holds approximately $1 billion in signed offtake agreements and is investing to bring the plant to continuous commercial operation.
“The U.S. has spent years discussing critical mineral independence while the vast majority of lithium processing has remained overseas,” said Linh Austin, president and CEO of R3 Lithium. “R3 Lithium is here today, with a proven facility that has already produced the product, the team that made it happen, and the capital needed to upgrade the line and keep it running, at commercial scale. R3 Lithium is setting a new pace for domestic lithium production, starting now.”
R3 Lithium will recover, refine and return lithium carbonate to the domestic battery supply chain through a calciner-based crystallization and water-based precipitation process that extracts lithium directly from recycled black mass on a single site, without primary mining or non-domestic refining. The plant provides 30,000 metric tons of shredding capacity and a 2,500-metric-ton lithium carbonate production line, with space allocated for an additional 2,500-metric-ton line.
The company projects that the Covington facility will account for more than 50% of total U.S. lithium carbonate production in 2027.
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