Ottawa is putting up to $65 million into Mangrove Water Technologies, branded as Mangrove Lithium, to accelerate lithium processing capacity and reduce scale-up risk in Canada’s battery materials chain.
The investment is being made through Canada Growth Fund, a $15 billion arm’s-length public investment vehicle with a mandate that includes backing critical minerals technologies to strengthen domestic supply chains for metals used in low-carbon energy.
Mangrove Lithium is privately held and based in Delta, BC, and is scaling lithium processing operations after constructing a plant near Vancouver that can process enough lithium to power 25,000 electric cars, described as 5% to 10% of the Canadian market.
The next step is a larger facility planned for Ontario or Quebec designed to produce about 20,000 tonnes of battery-grade material per year, described as enough to power 500,000 EVs.
Mangrove Lithium’s process uses electrochemical refining to convert unrefined lithium into lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate for EV batteries, using an electrical current instead of chemical extraction.
The technology has been tested in pilot and commercial demonstration settings, but it has not been proven at a fully ramped-up scale typical of a major global lithium refinery.
The Mangrove commitment lands within Ottawa’s broader critical minerals financing stack, including a $2.0 billion critical minerals fund launched in the federal budget late last year to speed mining and processing projects deemed nationally important.
CGF is being framed as one of several federal capital channels alongside Export Development Canada and the Canada Infrastructure Bank, using tools that include loans, equity stakes, stockpiling agreements, price floors, and offtakes, where an offtake is a promise to purchase a set amount of production at a set price.
The policy case is being sharpened by supply-chain concentration data: Canada produced 4,300 metric tons of lithium in 2024 versus 41,000 metric tons from China, while China controls about 70% of global lithium processing, and one of Canada’s only lithium mines, Tanco in Manitoba, is owned and operated by China’s Sinomine (Hong Kong) Rare Metals Resource.
CGF has also invested in other critical minerals operations in Canada, including Nouveau Monde Graphite, Foran Mining, and Rio Tinto in Quebec, as it builds a portfolio approach around de-risking projects through the “valley” between demo and industrial scale.
Mangrove’s CGF financing sits inside a broader $85 million funding round that includes earlier backers Breakthrough Energy Ventures and BMW i Ventures, and the company has raised more than $150 million to date.
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