Canada Just Opened North America's
First Electrochemical Lithium Refinery
 Haley Zaremba

China has been consolidating its control over global lithium supplies for years now. As the lithium-ion battery sector continues to grow at a massive pace, the extreme concentration of lithium supply chains gives China a major economic and geopolitical advantage. It also creates worrying vulnerabilities for the rest of the world that has come to rely on imports of the ‘white gold’ to keep their tech and energy sectors running.

Half of the global lithium market is controlled by China alone. “For over a decade, China has meticulously orchestrated a strategic ascent in the global electric vehicle (EV) batteries market, culminating in a dominance that now presents a formidable challenge to Western manufacturers,” the EE Times reported last year. This dominance functions  as “almost a moat” around battery production in China, protecting the sector from any external competition.

Lithium-ion batteries have become omnipresent, powering everything from your smartwatch and your phone to electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage. As oil and gas prices skyrocket against the backdrop of the Strait of Hormuz closure, the EV and energy sectors are poised for takeoff – making competition for lithium, and the resultant benefits for China, even more pronounced. But even before the current energy crisis breathed new life into the global clean energy transition, 2026 was already shaping up to be a ‘hot year for lithium.’ 

Incentive has never been higher for other nations around the world to step up their own lithium production and processing efforts. And this year, Canada may have made a major step toward breaking up China’s near-monopoly on lithium-ion battery production, thereby helping to relieve a “major choke point” in the EV supply chain. Mangrove Lithium, a lithium refining platform in Delta, British Columbia, just opened North America’s first-ever commercial-scale electrochemical lithium refining facility. 

The venture capital-backed company says that it will be able to produce 1,000 tonnes of refined battery-grade lithium per year, or about enough to support 25,000 electric vehicles. The venture reportedly uses a cutting-edge electrochemical technology that allows for more economical, flexible, and sustainable lithium refining as compared to traditional methods. 

“This is a landmark moment not just for Mangrove, but for Canada,” Dr. Saad Dara, CEO and Founder of Mangrove Lithium, was recently quoted by Interesting Engineering. “By commissioning the first commercial electrochemical lithium refinery in North America, we are proving that lithium can be refined domestically, sustainably, and competitively.”

The Delta plant is just the beginning for Mangrove, which has grand plans of creating an entire homeshored mine-to-cathode lithium supply chain. The company plans to develop a larger facility in Eastern Canada capable of producing enough material to support 500,000 EVs annually through the refining of lithium and the processing of spodumene, a raw source of lithium. These primary materials would also be sourced from Canadian mines.

Mangrove’s projects have the full support of the Canadian government, which sees these developments as critical to the country’s own energy security and independence goals. Canada’s national and energy security priorities have become heightened under the shadow of the Trump administration, and were a central platform for current Prime Minister Mark Carney. 

“Canada is leveraging our critical mineral resources — including our lithium — to unlock supply chain security, job creation and clean energy innovation,” said Tim Hodgson, Canadian Minister of Energy and Natural Resources. “Mangrove Lithium’s new headquarters will house North America’s first commercial electrochemical lithium refining facility — exactly the type of cutting-edge, sovereign Canadian project we need. By supporting projects like these, our new government is advancing Canada’s low-carbon potential, creating new careers, strengthening our security and creating reliable Canadian jobs in an uncertain time.”

While domestic lithium production and extraction will be hugely beneficial for energy independence and resilience, it does come with some significant downsides. Lithium extraction tends to be extremely environmentally costly, posing major risks for local communities and water resources. Of course, homeshoring these processes instead of outsourcing them to poorer countries is not necessarily a bad thing – in fact, it’s ethically a far sounder approach. But questions remain about which communities will host these extraction sites, and under what protections.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

Haley Zaremba is a writer and journalist based in Mexico City. She has extensive experience writing and editing environmental features, travel pieces, local news in the Bay Area, and music/culture reviews.

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