Turning Waste Rock into Battery Materials: A New Zealand Startup's Sustainable Approach

Aspiring Materials, a New Zealand company, has developed a patented process to extract valuable minerals, including nickel-manganese-cobalt hydroxide (NMC) for lithium-ion batteries, from olivine, a previously low-value waste product. Their process uses acid leaching to transform olivine into a solution from which silica, magnesium hydroxide, and NMC are extracted. The closed-loop system produces no harmful waste and utilizes renewable energy. While NMC constitutes only 10% of the output, this technology offers a more sustainable and geopolitically stable alternative for battery material supply chains, reducing reliance on high-risk mining regions.