American Manganese Inc. announced that the leach section of its technology defining demonstration plant project has achieved over 99% extraction of lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese from lithium-ion battery production scrap. During the demonstration plant's leach stage testing, various operating parameters were investigated to determine the optimal conditions and collect data for ongoing commercial plant design and planning. Analysis of a range of leach data showed that the successful extraction results were achieved.

To date, the demonstration plant has leached a few metric tons worth of lithium-ion battery production scrap, the primary source of recyclable materials. The scrap material comes from losses in the battery cell manufacturing process due to incompliant quality. According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, battery scrap will account for 78% of the pool of recyclable materials in 2025 and remain a significant recyclable source beyond 2030.