Linca Signs Mitsui MOU to Scale Black Mass Refining Beyond China

New Zealand battery-mineral recovery company Linca has signed a memorandum of understanding with Tokyo trading house Mitsui & Co., a deal CEO Ollie Crush expects to determine where the startup's black mass refining technology gets built — and who feeds it.

Linca spun off from Mint Innovation earlier this year and plans to commission a demonstration facility in the United Kingdom early next year. That plant exists to "retire as much technical risk as possible," Crush said, not to generate revenue. If the demo holds up, Linca intends to ramp the technology to commercial scale by the end of the decade.

The process at stake is hydrometallurgical. It recovers cobalt, nickel and other minerals from the black mass produced when end-of-life EV batteries are processed, and it does so without solvent-based extraction. Crush says dropping that step cuts cost and complexity, which matters for operators where space is tight and budgets are tighter.

What does the Mitsui deal actually cover?

Under the MOU, Mitsui will help Linca identify raw material sources, connect the company with potential offtakers, and facilitate technical and commercial exchanges. Fumiya Kamikawaji, general manager of Mitsui's Battery Materials and Recycling Business Department, said the arrangement provides a framework for evaluating Linca's technology and its potential applications. Mitsui has already flagged one concrete step: sending experts into the demo facility to assess operations and propose improvements.

"This enables us to use their global networks to understand, 'Where does our midstream refining technology have the most impact?'" Crush said. "Mitsui can source feedstock and has users for salts that come out of the process. They're a global player. They will be invaluable."

Once Linca is technically and commercially ready to scale, Mitsui will help line up joint venture opportunities in jurisdictions building out refining capacity, including the United States, the European Union and Japan. Europe is the initial target market. The logic is geopolitical as much as commercial: Crush wants to expand into any region seeking to reduce dependence on Chinese-sourced refined black mass, and he argues the technology could help the US secure mineral independence while complying with new federal mandates banning black mass exports.

The endgame is licensing. Linca would likely own and operate its first facilities, then partner with other companies to embed the technology inside their plants. The company has secured millions of dollars in seed funding and grants; Crush says it now seeks strategic investors across a couple more funding rounds to accelerate development.

"We see Mitsui as a fantastic and large Western conglomerate," Crush said. "For supply chain resilience, recovering critical minerals from scrap batteries — it's a no-brainer. A lot of these Western nations have that desire to bring refining back onshore. We want to be a part of that."

Who else is moving on black mass?

Linca enters a field that is filling fast:

• American Battery Technology Co. plans a second US black mass refinery in the Southeast to complement its Nevada facility, and holds a one-year exemption from the federal black mass import ban while that work proceeds.
• Nth Cycle has secured funding and offtake agreements for a black mass processing facility under construction in the Southeast.
• Cyclic Materials opened a mineral recovery facility in Arizona this year and expects a rare earth recycling campus in South Carolina to open in 2028.
• Bridge Green Upcycle partnered with Hartree Partners to market black mass produced at its upstate New York facility.

What decides what happens next?

The UK demo commissioning early next year is the gate. Everything downstream — joint ventures, licensing, commercial scale by 2030 — depends on a pilot plant doing what the brochure says it does.

One demonstration facility, one trading house, one decade deadline. That is the whole bet.