Electrified Materials signs letter of intent to acquire battery lifecycle firm Blackion
EV Engineering News
Posted September 30, 2026 by Chris Ruoff & filed under Newswire, The Tech.
Electrified Materials (EMCO), the majority-owned recycling subsidiary of American Resources, has signed a binding letter of intent (LOI) to acquire all of the equity in Blackion, a lithium-ion battery lifecycle and critical materials company. The all-stock deal values Blackion at about $13.2 million, based on an agreed $275 million pre-money valuation of EMCO.
Blackion handles feedstock origination, reverse logistics, battery lifecycle management, material recovery, traceability and closed-loop supply chain services, and it has operations and relationships in the US and abroad.
In July 2025, Blackion, EMCO and refiner ReElement Technologies announced an LFP recycling collaboration. Under that collaboration, Blackion would source end-of-life battery material and EMCO would disassemble and preprocess it. ReElement would then refine the LFP black mass into battery-grade lithium carbonate. Under a separate memorandum of understanding, ReElement and Blackion said they would share net revenue from sales of refined materials sourced through Blackion’s network.
EMCO is building a front-end platform for aggregation, dismantling, preprocessing and conditioning that feeds downstream refining at affiliate ReElement and other partners. Where commercially appropriate, ReElement can refine battery materials from EMCO into technical- and battery-grade lithium products.
A significant focus of the combined company will be battery materials, including LFP and other chemistries, manufacturing scrap and black mass. The combined company intends to work with battery and cell manufacturers, automotive and energy-storage companies, collection and logistics providers, battery recyclers, black mass producers, critical mineral processors and refiners. LFP cells contain lower concentrations of traditionally high-value metals than certain nickel- and cobalt-bearing chemistries, so the companies say LFP recycling economics depend on efficient logistics, preprocessing, scale and the ability to recover lithium economically.
“We believe we could build many of these capabilities organically, but doing so would require additional time, management resources and execution risk. Blackion brings an experienced, entrepreneurial team with complementary capabilities that can immediately strengthen what we are already building at Electrified Materials,” said Chris Dreska, CEO of Electrified Materials.
Source: American Resources
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