International Battery Metals

IBAT does not own lithium-in-ground resources. It is a technology and extraction-services company that deploys modular DLE plants at brine-source sites under lease-and-operate agreements. The company's revenue model is tied to lithium recovered, not to mineral exploration or mine ownership, which separates technology risk from resource risk.

IBAT commissioned its first commercial DLE module at a US Magnesium brine operation in Utah during 2024 and has confirmed production of lithium chloride concentrate (per the firm's public disclosures). This installation extracts lithium from a waste-salt stream of an existing magnesium production facility, rather than from a standalone brine aquifer, making it a unique demonstration of the technology on a by-product flow.

Conventional brine production pumps lithium-rich brine into vast, open-air evaporation ponds and waits 12 to 24 months for solar evaporation to concentrate the lithium. IBAT's DLE technology passes brine through a selective absorption column that captures lithium ions in a matter of hours, then returns the spent brine underground. The process cuts land use by more than 95 percent and water consumption materially, while shrinking project commissioning time from multi-year to sub-two-year.

Dr. John Burba, IBAT's founder and Chief Technology Officer, developed the core selective absorption medium over a multi-decade career at Dow Chemical and FMC Lithium. He is widely recognized as a pioneer in direct lithium extraction chemistry and the company's intellectual property portfolio is built around his inventions.

IBAT's public guidance points to lithium brine basins in the Western United States as priority expansion targets, and the company has evaluated resource sites in Chile and Argentina. Because the DLE modules are mobile and modular, the company can relocate plants as regional economics and offtake agreements shift — a flexibility that stationary extraction facilities lack.