R3 Lithium announced the start of operations at a Covington, Georgia, battery-recycling plant on September 10, backed by $15 million in Series A funding. Its immediate project was to upgrade an existing lithium-carbonate line and bring the site into continuous commercial operation.
The distinction is significant. Shredding used batteries produces a mineral-rich intermediate commonly called black mass. Recovering lithium from that material and making lithium carbonate adds a further refining step before the material can return to the battery supply chain.
R3 said its 154,000-square-foot site combined those functions. The plant had a 2,500-metric-ton lithium-carbonate production line and room for a second line of the same size. Those are capacity descriptions, not a report of annual output.
The company acquired the facility in July and retained the team that had demonstrated recycled-lithium production there in 2025. It also reported approximately $1 billion in signed offtake agreements. Those agreements indicate prospective buyers; they are not revenue already earned.
A plant also needs a supply of old batteries
A July Government Accountability Office assessment helps explain why the refining step matters. GAO found that mature battery-recycling technologies could reduce U.S. mineral imports within two to three years, but that available material was often landfilled or exported for processing.
The report identified collecting, sorting, transporting and storing feedstock as practical constraints. A recycling plant cannot make steady output from material it cannot reliably obtain. Building a domestic refining line addresses one part of that chain; organizing the flow of manufacturing scrap and retired batteries addresses another.
GAO also cautioned that building or repurposing recycling infrastructure can take substantial time and investment. R3’s use of an existing plant and experienced team may shorten some of that work, but the September announcement did not establish sustained throughput.
For Covington, the useful test is continuous production of saleable lithium carbonate. That would show the plant is doing more than preparing battery material for refining somewhere else.
Sources
- R3 Lithium Announces Initiation of Operations to Recover, Refine and Return Critical Minerals to the U.S. Battery Supply Chain — R3 Lithium via Business Wire / FinancialContent · 2026-09-10.
- Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. Import Reliance with Substitution and Recycling Technologies — Government Accountability Office · 2026-07-22.