The company is nearing completion on its first full-scale lithium production plant and looking for to eastern Canada for its next site

Before even completing its first major construction project, Mangrove Lithium is already jumping head-first into the early stages of building its second — and much larger — lithium-processing plant.

The British Columbia-based lithium refiner has plans to open its first commercial lithium processing facility in the early part of Q1 2026. At the same time it’s looking to build and open a second Canadian plant in the next three years.

At full scale Mangrove hopes to produce enough lithium hydroxide to support at least 525,000 EVs by 2030. Currently, the company operates a pilot-scale system which produces approximately 10 tonnes of lithium per year.

Plants one through two

Construction of Mangrove’s flagship US$35 million facility in Delta, B.C., is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

It will house Mangrove’s corporate headquarters, a research-and-development lab and its electro-chemical-based lithium processing system

Once up and running, the plant is expected to produce 1,000 tonnes of battery grade lithium (specifically, lithium hydroxide) annually. It already has off-take agreements in place for the output. To put that into perspective, the company says it will produce enough lithium for 25,000 EV batteries each year.

Adding 100 times the processing capacity is one thing, but the company’s vision for a second manufacturing plant eclipses that jump in scale by a significant amount.

Mangrove’s plan for its second plant would see it produce 20,000 tonnes per annum, or enough to power over 500,000 electric vehicles annually.

At this stage, Mangrove is in the process of selecting the location for its new facility. And rather than building in British Columbia again, a spokesperson tells Electric Autonomy the new site will likely be located somewhere in eastern Canada.

Construction is expected to begin on the building sometime during 2027, and the company hopes to have the facility come online in 2028.

How feasible is it?

According to a company representative who spoke to Electric Autonomy, Mangrove’s processing technology is perfectly capable of scaling to the degree its aiming for.

“The good thing about our technology is it’s already at full scale. It’s just a matter of numbering up the technology. And the supporting engineering around that is off-the-shelf stuff.”

Beyond its size, one major difference between the second plant and the one now under construction will be the addition of a spodumene-processing capability.

“Right now, what we do is we take lithium chloride or lithium sulfate that comes from spodumene or from brine, and we refine that. We take the intermediate product and we refine it into a battery-grade product,” explains the Mangrove spokesperson.

“But at this new facility that we will be building, we will be taking the spodumene-concentrate mineral, and processing that with technology that already exists and is in use, and then integrating that into our proprietary flow sheet and taking it from essentially rock to battery-grade product.”

Mangrove says that a number of its current customers plan on opening EV gigafactories in North American and the company envisions being a key part of those North American based supply chains.

Despite the challenging business and political climates in both Canada and the U.S. for electric vehicles, the Mangrove spokesperson says the company is optimistic about the future of EVs and the demand for lithium.

“If we’re talking about trade disputes and tariffs and all that, one thing that hasn’t been touched is critical minerals, which lithium is a part of. We don’t anticipate it being an issue, but it’s something we’re keeping a close eye on, for sure.”