Item 1. Business
Introduction
American Battery Technology Company (the “Company”, “ABTC”, “we” and “us”) is an integrated critical battery materials company in the lithium-ion battery industry that is working to increase the domestic U.S. production of critical battery materials, such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese through its engagement in the exploration of new primary resources of battery metals, the development and commercialization of new technologies for the extraction of these battery metals from primary resources, and the commercialization of an internally developed integrated process for the recycling of lithium-ion batteries. Through this three-pronged approach the Company is working to both increase the domestic production of these battery materials and to ensure that as these materials reach their end of lives, the constituent elemental battery metals are returned to the domestic manufacturing supply chain in a closed-loop fashion. In addition, we are committed to operating our business in a safe and environmentally responsible manner by working with our employees, customers, vendors, and local communities to minimize our environmental impact and comply with local, state and federal environmental laws and regulations.
The Company’s corporate headquarters are in Reno, Nevada, and its mineral exploration office is located in Tonopah, Nevada. The Company’s recycling plant for recycling lithium-ion batteries is in McCarran, Nevada.
Company History
The Company was incorporated as Oroplata Resources, Inc. under the laws of the State of Nevada on October 6, 2011, for the purpose of acquiring rights to mineral properties with the eventual objective of being a producing mineral company. On August 8, 2016, the Company formed Lithortech Resources Inc. as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company to serve as its operating subsidiary for lithium resource exploration and mine development. On June 29, 2018, the Company changed the name of Lithortech Resources to LithiumOre Corp. (“LithiumOre”). On May 3, 2019, the Company changed its name to American Battery Metals Corporation. On August 12, 2021, the Company further changed its name to American Battery Technology Company, which better aligns with the Company’s current business activities and future objectives.
Industry Overview
Lithium-ion batteries have become the rechargeable battery of choice in cell phones, computers, electric vehicles, and large scale electric stationary storage systems. The global market for lithium-ion batteries surpassed $100B in 2024 and is projected to exceed $250B by 2030, as there continues to be technology, regulatory, and social movement driving demand growth. This, in turn, is driving significant increases in demand for battery materials such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese.
Lithium-ion batteries are designed in a variety of form-factors and chemistries. Current cell-level form-factors utilized are primarily cylindrical, prismatic, and pouch geometries. The most common battery cathode chemistries that have emerged are lithiated nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (“NCA”), lithiated nickel manganese cobalt oxide (“NMC”), lithiated cobalt oxide (“LCO”), and lithiated iron phosphate (“LFP”). The most common battery anode chemistries consist of graphite, silicon, and lithium metal. These chemistries are expected to evolve based on the development of new technologies and the availability, cost, and life-cycle environmental footprint of required minerals.
The current manufacturing supply chain for lithium-ion batteries is segmented and is organized into sub-industries that are moving towards operating in a closed-loop fashion:
● battery
material providers,
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● chemical
refiners,
● cell
manufacturers, and
● manufacturers
of end-use product (electric vehicle, stationary storage, consumer electronics, etc.) manufacturers.
Battery material providers can be classified into two categories: primary producers who explore for and extract virgin resources, and secondary producers who extract minerals from scrap and end-of-life products for re-sale into the lithium-ion battery supply chain. ABTC operates in both categories of the battery material supply segment, which is discussed in greater detail below.
Chemical refiners source battery-grade materials from suppliers to manufacture into cell components, including cathodes, anodes, electrolytes, and separators. Currently the vast majority of global refining capacity is located outside the United States, primarily in Asia.
Cell manufacturers source cell components and assemble those components into modules and packs, which are then sold to Original Equipment Manufacturers (“OEM” or “OEMs”). Cell manufacturing is also currently concentrated in Asia, with China accounting for over 70 % of global cell manufacturing capacity.
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The OEM segment is the final step to manufacturing any end-use product containing lithium-ion batteries. OEM manufacturing capacity for electric vehicles, stationary storage, and consumer electronics is distributed globally.
Each segment of the lithium-ion battery supply chain has seen disparate quantities of investment, with those variations further pronounced with specific geographies. Investment in battery material suppliers, both primary and secondary, and chemical refining capacity, has been far outpaced by investments in cell manufacturing and end-use OEMs. This disconnect in available feedstock and refining capacity has caused significant imbalances in the global supply chain, with those imbalances even more pronounced within the United States and apparent by the volatility in price of these underlying materials. Further, while there is significant cell manufacturing and OEM manufacturing capacity in the United States, less than 1 % of global battery materials needed to supply these facilities are sourced in the US, resulting in a severe domestic capacity imbalance and risk to the domestic economy. This risk in the security and cost of supply has resulted in numerous issues for industries reliant on lithium-ion batteries and has the potential to dramatically slow the adoption of electric vehicles, renewable energy storage and other uses for lithium-ion battery metals.
Overview of Battery Materials Supply
Supply of battery materials is currently dominated by primary production. Development of new sources of primary supply are typically subject to long development times and high capital costs, putting further constraints on the supply of these materials. In addition, the majority of primary production is concentrated in high geopolitical risk locations. Each of the primary minerals discussed are traded on a number of global commodity exchanges and market pricing for each is readily available. Additional details on the primary development of the main critical materials are discussed below:
Lithium: Primary lithium is traditionally extracted from lithium brines or from hard rock deposits, and with recent innovations to also manufacture primary lithium from lithium-bearing claystone resources. Lithium brine deposits are accumulations of saline groundwater that are enriched in dissolved lithium. These deposits can be found in salt flats (such as those in South America), geothermal deposits (such as the Salton Sea in California), and oil fields. Extraction of lithium from brines typically involves large-scale evaporation techniques, thus consuming large amounts of water and energy. Hard rock sources of lithium are typically found in spodumene pegmatite deposits (such as those in Western Australia) and are mined using conventional mining and processing techniques. Extraction of lithium from claystone resources is a relatively new technique with various extraction technologies currently under development.
Nickel: Primary nickel is mined from both surface and underground operations. Traditional processing techniques for nickel involve crushing, leaching, and floatation techniques. The primary competing source of demand for nickel is the steel industry, for both steel alloy and in plating of stainless steel. Supply is currently dominated by production from Indonesia, Philippines, and Russia.
Cobalt: Cobalt is typically mined from open pit and underground operations using traditional mining and processing techniques. The majority of cobalt production is a by-product of copper or nickel production. The competing source of demand for cobalt is steel production where cobalt is utilized as a high-strength steel alloy. Concentration of supply from the Democratic Republic of Congo has given rise to significant concerns over the supply of primary cobalt resources.
Manganese: Manganese is typically mined from open pit surface mines using traditional mining and processing techniques. As with the previously mentioned minerals, the primary competing source of demand is steel production, where manganese is used as an alloy and to deoxidize steel. South Africa is the world’s largest producer of manganese, followed by Australia and China.
Secondary supply of feedstock, or recycling, is a relatively new market segment that has seen limited investment compared to the other segments of the battery supply chain. Current recycling techniques can be classified into two categories: High temperature thermal processes (pyrometallurgy) and mechanical crushing/simple hydrometallurgy processes. Both techniques process the feedstock batteries into an intermediate compound, a metal matte or black mass, which is then further processed through a refining process to extract the constituent metals. Both processes mainly focus on the recovery of nickel and cobalt. The majority of these operations are located in China and South Korea.
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High temperature thermal processes account for the majority of current recycling operations. Batteries are placed into high-temperature furnaces and melted. A number of the key battery materials are lost in the high temperature processing and smelting phase, including lithium, graphite, and aluminum. The remaining metal matte is then processed through a refining process. The high temperature processing can present challenges to refining the metal matte from this process into products that meet the high purity specifications required for battery cathode manufacturing. Further, the process is energy intensive and can cause substantial air and water pollution.
The mechanical crushing/simple hydrometallurgy approach involves placing batteries into large shredding/grinding machines. The resulting shredded material is then processed to produce a black mass. This resulting back mass is then processed through a bulk hydrometallurgical process designed to remove impurities and extract the high-value minerals. The high level of impurities in the black mass resulting from the shredding/grinding process makes the recovery of battery grade materials challenging. Additionally, the solvents used in the extraction process can have adverse environmental impacts and significantly increase the costs associated with the recycling process.
The black mass resulting from the recycling process has become a readily tradable commodity. However, the quality and value of the black mass is highly variable based on the chemistry of the battery that is being processed and the amount of remaining impurities in the material. Metal refiners are developing processes to extract battery-grade materials from the various forms of black mass.
The overall market and pricing for battery feedstock materials will be driven by the supply/demand balance of each commodity. Chemical refiners require specific purity and quality standards for the inputs for their manufacturing processes. Competition will be based on the ability of producers, both primary and secondary, to deliver reliable quantities of materials that meet the specifications required in the battery manufacturing process, while maintaining cash costs that are below the marginal cost of supply.
Our Business
Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling
ABTC has developed a universal lithium-ion battery recycling system that is capable of recycling batteries with both a wide range of form factors (packs, modules, cylindrical cells, prismatic cells, pouch cells, defect and intermediate waste cells, metal scraps, slurries, and powders) and of a wide range of cathode chemistries (lithiated cobalt oxide, lithiated nickel-cobalt-aluminum oxide, lithiated nickel-cobalt-manganese oxide, lithiated nickel-cobalt-manganese-aluminum oxide, lithiated nickel-oxide, and lithiated manganese-oxide) of various relative weighting of transition metals.
The Company’s recycling system is a two-phase process: an automated de-manufacturing process followed by a targeted chemical extraction train to separate the individual high-value metals. The Company intends to commission each phase in sequence. Phase 1, the automated de-manufacturing process, separates the components of battery feedstock material into its constituent components, including scrap metals and cathode and anode powders in the form of black mass filter cake. Scrap metals are then sold as byproducts under various offtake agreements or into the open scrap market. The black mass filter cake produced in this phase will also be sold under offtake contracts or into the open market. Upon commissioning of Phase 2, the black mass produced in Phase 1 will be fed into a proprietary chemical extraction train to extract lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and other products and upgrade them to the battery cathode grade specifications demanded by high energy density cathode manufacturers.
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The Company has acquired and leveraged the experience of several members of its leadership and implementation teams who worked on the design, construction, commissioning, and optimization of one of the largest lithium-ion battery manufacturing giga factories in the world. This significant pool of experience has enabled the team to leverage their knowledge of the failure mechanisms that can cause battery components, cells, and modules to fail leading to the development an automated deconstruction process combined with a targeted hydrometallurgical, non-smelting process that deconstructs battery packs to modules, modules to cells, cells to subcell components, and then sorting and separating those subcell components in a strategic fashion. Because of our uniquely pioneered recycling process, we are able to realize greater net benefits than current conventional methods. These benefits include:
● Decreased
air and liquid pollutant emissions through strategic design, and with no high-temperature operations,
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● Separation
of low value materials early in the processing train allows for high recovery and purity of high value products,
● Metal
products manufactured to meet battery cathode specifications are able to re-enter supply chain in closed-loop fashion,
● Throughput
of recycling facilities equal to that of manufacturing facilities, on a per region basis,
● Low
capital costs, through avoidance of high-temperature operations and minimal generation of waste, and
● Short
processing residence times through high-speed strategic disassembly and material handling.
Additional details regarding the recycling plant are discussed in Item 2. Properties.
Industry Collaborations
In September 2019, the Company was selected as the sole winner of the battery recycling portion of the Circularity Challenge hosted by BASF, Stanley Black & Decker, and Greentown Labs. BASF is one of the largest high-energy density cathode manufacturing companies in the US and most significant global purchasers of lithium-ion battery metal materials. The challenge was developed to encourage new, innovative technologies for the recycling of large-format lithium-ion batteries, with a goal to establish and develop a circular economy in the battery supply chain. Participants were asked to demonstrate their ability to recycle an end-of-life lithium-ion battery into battery grade minerals that could then be used for the manufacture of new lithium-ion batteries. As the winner, the Company received seed funding, access to the Greentown Labs facilities (see Item 2. Properties), and the exploration of partnership agreements with the host companies. The Company and BASF continue to explore several avenues of collaboration to accelerate the commercialization of the Company’s lithium-ion battery recycling technology.
In October 2021, the Company, received a competitively bid $2 million contract award from the US Advanced Battery Consortium (“USABC”). USABC is a subsidiary of the United States Council for Automotive Research LLC and enabled by a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The member companies include General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Stellantis NV. USABC’s mission is to develop electrochemical energy storage technologies that advance commercialization of next generation electrified vehicle applications. The objective of the contract award is for the commercial-scale development and demonstration of an integrated lithium-ion battery recycling system, the production of battery cathode grade metal products, the synthesis of high energy density active cathode material from these recycled battery metals by cathode producer and lithium-ion battery recycler BASF, and the fabrication of large format automotive battery cells from these recycled materials and the testing of these cells against otherwise identical cells made from virgin sourced metals by cell technology developer C4V. The demonstration of the entire closed-loop battery manufacturing supply chain within a single project is meant to foster the establishment of a domestic low-cost and low-environmental impact battery recycling infrastructure
Competition
The Company expects to recover several types of byproducts as well as battery cathode grade lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese products through its recycling process and will compete with two categories of producers of these commodities: competing recycling processers and facilities and primary producers of the battery materials.
Competing recycling processes and facilities are primarily located in the United States, Europe, South Korea, and China and employ various techniques for extraction of the contained battery metals. In general, processers that employ high-temperature thermal processes or shredding/solvent extraction techniques focus on the recovery of nickel and cobalt, with limited ability to recover lithium, manganese, or other metals. The Company’s process to extract each of the battery components enables the Company to extract additional value from the same amount of feedstock to enable low-cost and low-environmental operations.
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Primary producers of lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese are distributed globally. Lithium production is largely located in the Americas, Australia, and Asia. Approximately two-thirds of cobalt production is sourced from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nickel production is dominated by Indonesia, China, and Australia. Manganese production is concentrated in South Africa, Australia, and China.
The commodities and specialty chemicals that are ultimately used by cathode manufacturers are required to meet stringent specifications, whether that mineral is sourced from a primary or a secondary resource. Thus, the competition in these markets is largely based on product quality and reliability of supply.
Primary Resource Development & Refining
In addition to its battery recycling operations, the Company has been designing and optimizing our internally developed sustainable lithium extraction process for the manufacturing of battery cathode grade lithium hydroxide from Nevada-based sedimentary claystone primary resources. (See Item 2. Properties for additional information).
The Company is currently conducting geological mapping, sampling, geochemical analysis, and proprietary extraction trials to characterize the resource and to quantify the performance of the lithium extraction and manufacturing operations. In parallel with the current exploration activities, the Company has designed, constructed, and is operating a multi-tonne per day integrated demonstration scale facility to process sedimentary resource from the project. This facility is intended to demonstrate the commercial viability of the Company’s extraction and refining processes. The Company will continue to analyze the economic competitiveness of the project throughout the demonstration phases.
The Company’s in-house developed extraction technologies do not require the inefficient evaporation ponds associated with conventional lithium-from-brine mining. Our extraction process utilizes a selective leaching process for the low-cost extraction of lithium from claystone sedimentary resources that allows for significantly lower consumption of acid, lower levels of contaminants in the generated leach liquor, and lower overall costs of production.
Industry Collaborations
In October 2021, the Company, as the primary grantee, with DuPont Water Solutions as a sub-grantee, was awarded a $4.5 million competitive grant through the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing Office, Critical Materials Innovation program to advance the research, development, and commercialization of its technologies for the mining and manufacturing of battery grade lithium hydroxide from its lithium-bearing claystone deposits. The grant provided partial funding for the development of a multi-tonnes per day processing facility to implement its lithium refining technology at pilot facility scale which was commissioned in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024.
Competition
Primary lithium production is concentrated in the Americas, Australia, and Asia. The lithium that is ultimately used by cathode manufacturers is required to meet stringent specifications, whether that mineral is sourced from a primary or a secondary resource. Thus, the competition in these markets is largely based on product quality and reliability of supply.
Employees
As of September 15, 2025, the Company had 157 full-time and 6 part-time employees. Additional workers may be hired on a contract basis as needed.
Available Information
We are subject to the information and periodic reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and, in accordance therewith, we file periodic reports, proxy statements and other information with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). We make available, free of charge, our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and amendments to these reports on our website at https://americanbatterytechnology.com/ as soon as reasonably practicable after those reports are electronically filed with, or furnished to, the SEC.
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