Two recyclers filed for bankruptcy protection
Li Cycle built 5 facilities, called spokes, that shred old batteries into black mass, a mixed metal shred that still needs refining before it can go into a new battery. The company never finished the Rochester Hub, the plant meant to refine that black mass into finished material, after construction stopped in fall 2023 over rising costs. The Department of Energy finalized a 475 million dollar loan to complete the Hub, but Li Cycle never drew the money, because the loan required private financing it could not raise. Li Cycle filed for creditor protection, a legal process that pauses debts owed by a company while it reorganizes or sells itself, in Canada on May 14, 2025, and the filing was recognized under United States bankruptcy law the next day.
Ascend Elements broke ground on Apex 1, a planned battery materials plant in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and won 164 million dollars, then a further 316 million dollars, in federal grants. The government cancelled both grants, 480 million dollars combined, a MAOWCE total of the 2 figures. Ascend Elements then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a court process that lets a company keep operating while it reorganizes its debts, on April 9, 2026, in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, after that Kentucky funding collapsed. The trade publication Resource Recycling frames the filing as part of a wider pattern, recyclers across the sector building capacity ahead of feedstock, meaning batteries old enough to be scrapped, that has not shown up yet.
Each row is a different kind of federal promise, not the same measurement repeated. The Redwood Materials figure, a conditional loan ceiling, is from source 4. The Ascend Elements figure is a MAOWCE total of 2 separate grants, 164 million dollars and 316 million dollars, both reported cancelled by source 3. The Li Cycle figure is the loan Canary Media reports was finalized to complete its unfinished refinery but never drawn, source 2. The Cirba Solutions figure is the grant it received and used toward an expansion already built, source 5.
Show the numbers
| Redwood Materials, conditional loan offered | 2000 |
| Ascend Elements, grants committed then cancelled | 480 |
| Li Cycle, loan finalized then never drawn | 475 |
| Cirba Solutions, grant paid toward a built expansion | 75 |
Two recyclers kept building
Redwood Materials is building a materials campus in McCarran, Nevada, backed by a conditional federal loan with a ceiling of 2 billion dollars, conditional meaning Redwood still has to meet requirements the government set before the money moves. The plant is planned to produce refined material rather than black mass, about 36,000 metric tons a year of copper foil and about 100,000 metric tons a year of cathode active material, the part of a battery that stores its charge. Panasonic Energy of North America, already making cells next to the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada, is named as a customer. Redwood already recycled 20 gigawatt hours of batteries and earned 200 million dollars from recycled materials in 2024, at sites it already runs today.
Cirba Solutions has recycled General Motors battery scrap under a signed contract since 2021, extended through 2024, and had already processed over 1 million pounds of it by the time of the extension. The company used a 75 million dollar federal grant to expand its Lancaster, Ohio site, one that was already built and already running, and plans to raise its recycled battery cathode production 600% over 4 years.
Our collaboration with GM demonstrates their commitment to achieving sustainability goals and their trust in Cirba Solutions to handle a critical part of the EV supply chain.
David Klanecky, president and chief executive officer of Cirba Solutions. Source 5.
Integrating efficient EV battery recycling processes helps lower emissions upstream in the battery supply chain.
Melissa Flaherty, director of sustainable EV battery ecosystem at General Motors. Source 5.
Canary Media states the Li Cycle figure in kilotons and does not say whether these are metric tons or short tons. The Department of Energy states the Redwood Materials figures in metric tons. A metric ton and a short ton differ by under 10%, small enough that the size gap this chart shows still holds.
Show the numbers
| Redwood Materials cathode material | 100 |
| Redwood Materials copper foil | 36 |
| Li Cycle black mass | 40 |
What separated them
The clearest difference between the 2 pairs is timing. Redwood and Cirba each had a named customer or a running site before their federal money arrived, while Li Cycle and Ascend Elements each raised federal support before a refinery or a customer was in place. The 2 billion dollar loan ceiling offered to Redwood is about 4 times the 475 million dollar loan Li Cycle never drew, a MAOWCE comparison of the 2 loan figures, and both point to the same test, whether a customer or a loan condition was satisfied before or after the concrete was poured.