Image: Ascend Elements Specifically, the company, founded in 2015 in Massachusetts, has now initiated a voluntary Chapter 11 restructuring process in Westborough, Massachusetts. This process is part of US insolvency law. CEO Linh Austin struck a defiant tone in a lengthy post on LinkedIn: “It is not a signal that we have given up.” Rather, the Chapter 11 process provides the company with ‘a proven, court‑supervised framework to restructure our liabilities while continuing normal operations under our existing management team.’ He added: “It is a commonly used financial and legal tool to allow us to reset and move forward.” Ascend Elements encountered difficulties when the Trump administration reversed funding for energy projects from the Biden era last autumn, including $316 million earmarked for Ascend Elements for a planned facility in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The facility was intended to produce battery materials from black mass recovered from end-of-life electric vehicle batteries. However, $206 million of the funding had already been disbursed, which Ascend Elements was apparently allowed to retain. The company has nevertheless pressed ahead with its plans for the factory, which it is building in collaboration with a subsidiary of the South Korean conglomerate SK. CEO Linh Austin stated that a site opened in Georgia in 2025 is the first US facility capable of recovering lithium carbonate with a purity of over 99 percent from used batteries and scrap at an industrial scale. The insights gained from this facility are now being applied to complete and ramp up the Hopkinsville plant. Progress appears to remain on track for the construction of a production facility for recycled cathode materials in Poland, which is being subsidised with approximately €290 million by the neighbouring country. The project involves an integrated plant for the production of battery cathode materials (pCAM) and the recycling of lithium-ion batteries using “Hydro-to-Cathode” technology. techcrunch.com
Liked by Mason Green, Nathan Nelson
Liked by Mason Green, Nathan Nelson
Liked by Mason Green, Nathan Nelson
