ABTC Trades Old Dirt for New Gold

The American Battery Technology Company, a firm with more ironclad phrases in its title than a steamboat has bolts–has gone and sold off one of its dusty old parcels in Fernley—a chunk of land that, by all modern reckoning, had sat more idle than a dog on a hot porch. The patch, a full 12 acres on Logan Lane, has fetched the tidy sum of $6.75 million, with the papers expected to be signed, sealed, and swapped in July.

For most folks, selling a bit of unworked land might not seem like a tale worth telling, but to hear the ABTC brass tell it, this sale is about as strategic as General Grant’s advance on Vicksburg. You see, the company, which fancies itself a pioneer in the world of lithium-ion battery recycling—a trade as full of smoke and steam as any Lake Taho sidewheeler—aims to pour those proceeds straight into its glittering operation over at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center.

Nestled in McCarran, the facility hums with all the elegant mystery of a clockmaker’s shop. It’s there they’re engaged in what the company swears is a one-of-a-kind system that can tear down batteries of every ilk and extract the precious metals therein, like a prospector pans gold from a mountain stream.

They reckon their methods, which involve “selective hydrometallurgy,” a phrasing that makes some scratch their head, are the golden ticket to building a homegrown supply of battery materials and loosening our dependence on faraway mines and monopolies.

ABTC’s top man, a fellow Ryan Melsert, spoke like a man pleased with the smell of success wafting from his stovepipe hat. He declared that selling the Fernley property wasn’t just a matter of ridding themselves of extra baggage—it was about fueling the future.

With a few million dollars now headed toward the second phase of their technical wizardry, Mr. Melsert seems intent on seeing his company carve out one of North America’s first fully closed-loop battery material supply chains, a fancy way of saying they intend to use up, clean up, and start again without much waste—which is a mighty fine idea.

The company hasn’t yet decided what to do with another tract of land they own just down the lane, nor with the water rights they hold like a gambler clutching a half-decent hand. But if the past is any clue, they’ll soon find a way to turn those into something shiny and green.

And so it goes. A patch of desert dirt trades hands, and a company dealing in the alchemy of electrified refuse marches onward, talking of sulfates, hydroxides, and black mass as if they were ingredients in some sorcerer’s brew.