BMW i Ventures announced a lead investment in the Series A-1 financing round of Vancouver-based Mangrove Lithium. The company has developed a modular platform producing battery-grade lithium hydroxide and carbonate from diverse input streams and assets to improve the sustainability profile of lithium. BMW i Ventures is joined by existing investor Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

Mangrove’s patent-pending, proprietary technology uses electrochemical processes to convert lithium chloride and lithium sulfate directly into lithium hydroxide. The technology also produces fungible byproducts, boosting investment rate of return and solidifying project bankability. These byproducts, HCl and H₂SO₄ in the instances of lithium chloride and lithium sulfate, respectively, can be used at the extraction stage in the process of acquiring lithium to improve sustainability with a closed-loop extraction process.

Mangrove Lithium’s electrochemical process eliminates the need for a carbonate plant, reducing the operating costs and time associated with first converting feedstock into lithium carbonate. This is essential to the future of electric vehicles, as a sustainable and scalable production of lithium is needed to meet the increasing battery demand.

Mangrove’s modular solution can be scaled to any capacity, at point of extraction or point of manufacturing or recycling, and co-located with upstream lithium producers or cathode and cell manufacturers. This enables a more diversified allocation of refining capacities worldwide.

The platform technology is also being commercialized for the conversion of waste brines to chemicals and desalinated water.

Mangrove’s technology is the lowest-energy solution on the market, so it is not only the least expensive solution, but also the greenest. Sites with renewable energy sources could nearly eliminate their carbon footprint, as well as most of the harmful reagents used in today’s lithium refining.

We are seeing an increasing need for these types of technologies as lithium demand increases, and accessibility to green solutions remains limited today. Mangrove's core technology offers the opportunity to fundamentally improve the supply chain of lithium production unlocking new lithium supply in a more environmentally-friendly way.

—Kasper Sage, Managing Partner at BMW i Ventures

Mangrove’s technology facilitates a resilient supply chain with its mobile plants, ability to process both chloride and sulfate feedstocks, and output battery-grade lithium hydroxide or carbonate. This differentiates from other technologies due to its ability to produce high-purity lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate from a diversity of feedstocks at low energy consumption and high recovery rates.

The new investment will be used to further accelerate the launch of Mangrove's first commercial plant.