Neometals (LON: NMT) (ASX: NMT) shares are up about 1% in London, down 1% on Oz. The NMT share price mover is the news that they’ve been granted an Australian patent on one part of their lithium battery recycling process. Which is nice, obviously, but not that nice equally clearly. That the Oz patent is going ahead pretty much does mean that the similar claims across all the major jurisdictions will go ahead. But this trivial share price move does show that the patent isn’t all that important, Also, therefore, that the process itself isn’t.
The announcement: “Innovative battery material recycler, Neometals Ltd (ASX: NMT & AIM: NMT) ("Neometals" or "the Company"), is pleased to announce that the Australian Patent Office has granted Neometals' 50% owned recycling intellectual property subsidiary, A.C.N. 630 589 507 Pty Ltd ("ACN Co"), a patent for the key process steps of its lithium-ion battery recycling process ("LiB Recycling Technology"). The Australian patent (Australian Patent No.2019400942) is the first to grant of the seventeen national patent applications filed by ACN Co for the LiB Recycling Technology in key jurisdictions across the globe.” Which is super and well done to the boffins of course.
But think on what this actually is. This is on the processing of the “black mass” - that’s the ground up metal bits of old lithium batteries. There are many - many many even - paths through chemistry to do this. Most of them much of a muchness too. Having a patent on one specific and particular path or process isn’t all that big a deal. Because there are so many other that others can use.
Neometals share price from Google Finance
We’ve talked before about Neometals: “So, given that this is where much of the world's vanadium comes from we're clearly aware that this is a viable source of Vanadium supply. Find a blast furnace operator that does not retrieve the V in the process and work with them to do so. This part of the Neometals process is obvious. The numbers look reasonable enough, the feasibility study shows a positive net present value which is the usual starting point for considering whether a project is actually worth doing.” They are working across a number of processes for a number of metals. At least some of which are entirely viable.
We’ve also looked at the lithium battery recycling at Neometals: “Neometals (ASX: NMT) (LON: NMT) shares are up 22% in Australia and 8.6% in London on the back of an announcement about their success, in their joint venture with Primobius, in recycling lithium batteries.” The thing is the shares are well down from that point. Because being able to recycle that black mass, well, it’s a fairly normal thing to be able to do. Therefore the profits from being able to do it are likely to pan out as just normal profits from the employment of capital and labour.
The reason the market’s not excited about Neometals and their lithium battery recycling patent about it is because there’s little exciting about being able to recycle lithium batteries. It might well be essential, even legally necessary, but it’s not exciting.