Glencore Offtake Deal Increases Recycled Lithium Supply
US based critical raw materials supplier Nth Cycle has announced that it has signed a binding ten-year offtake agreement with Glencore, the leading miner, commodities trading house and critical raw materials supplier. As part of the US$1bn agreement, Glencore will sell Nth Cycle 24,000 tonnes per year of black mass, the shredded battery parts derived from battery recycling.
Nth Cycle will then process that black mass and supply Glencore with lithium carbonate and a nickel-rich material known as mixed hydroxide product (MHP) for ten years. The offtake volumes will depend on the specific chemistry of the black mass supplied, which can vary depending on the underlying battery chemistries of the recycled material.
Jyothish George, Head of Marketing, Metals and Bulks, Glencore, comments: “Nth Cycle has been at the forefront of building domestic US refining capacity, and we are pleased to be partnering with them.”
By supplying black mass from our US operations and taking the refined product to market, we can help close the loop in the supply of critical minerals for our US customers
Nth Cycle plans to supply the material from a processing centre that the recycler is planning to construct in the US Southwest, with operations expected to begin in 2029. In August, Nth Cycle announced that it had been awarded a US$100m grant from the US Department of Energy towards the cost of constructing the plant. The size of the processing centre has been doubled in response to the offtake agreements agreed with Glencore and Trafigura.
"Partnering with Glencore represents another significant step forward for Nth Cycle and a strong and resilient domestic critical mineral supply chain,” said Megan O’Connor, CEO and Co-Founder of Nth Cycle. “With their premiere global network, this agreement helps guarantee [Nth Cycle's commercial-scale black mass refining facility] will have the feedstock and off-take needed to meet the soaring market demand for critical materials – with significant opportunities to deploy our [proprietary electroextraction] system for copper and rare earth elements as well.”
The offtake deal follows on from a previous ten-year offtake agreement agreed between Nth Cycle and Trafigura in March 2026, under which Trafigura committed to purchase 2,000 tonnes of contained nickel in MHP and 1,500 tonnes of lithium carbonate, refined from 12,000 tonnes of black mass.
The collaboration also provides for Glencore to jointly explore with Nth Cycle the deployment of its electroextraction system for black mass refining in Europe, as well as rare earth and copper recovery globally. Glencore is a large marketer of black mass and acquired the assets of battery recycler Li-Cycle in 2025.
- Nth Cycle has developed a patented electroextraction platform, Oyster, that combines electrochemistry, filtration, and chemical precipitation into a single architecture
- The modular system combines multiple refining steps in one continuous process with electricity tuned to target different metals
- The electroextraction platform produces 75% less waste and recycles reagents in a near-closed loop process
- The platform’s modular, compact design compresses build times to under two years
- Nth Cycle's modular technology also reduces the capital intensity by up to 70%, and produces competitive margins at 5-10x smaller scale
Glencore
Glencore is one of the world’s largest global diversified natural resource companies and a major producer and marketer of more than 60 commodities. Glencore’s customers are principally industrial consumers, such as those in the automotive, steel, power generation, battery manufacturing and oil sectors.
Trafigura
Trafigura is a leading commodities group, and operates industrial assets and operates businesses including multi-metals producer Nyrstar.
US Department of Energy
In August, the DOE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation (CMEI), Manufacturing Deployment Office (MDO) under the Battery Materials Processing and Battery Manufacturing & Recycling grant program, funded to expand US critical mineral processing and domestic battery manufacturing capacity.
Executives
Jyothish George
Head of Marketing, Metals and Bulks, Glencore
Megan O'Connor
CEO
