EVSX is a subsidiary of St-Georges Eco-Mining, first announced in January of 2021. ¹⁾ The stated goal of EVSX is to “develop closed-looped solutions to extract all of the value of used domestic, commercial and electric vehicles (EV) batteries”.²⁾

EVSX is intended to be a source of blackmass through its operations, and this blackmass in turn is intended to supply SXM.³⁾

We will be seeing volume increases, we believe, from that supply agreement as soon as we're commissioned, and we're actually going to be looking at other battery chemistries being supplied from Call2Recycle, but having that supply agreement is absolutely critical. We can have the permits in hand - we have an environmental compliance approval in place, we have a line which is technologically one of the most advanced lines in North America for processing, but if you don't have enough battery supply agreement, it doesn't matter - and we do have that.

-Ian C. Peres ⁴⁾ Interview audio

EVSX operates a battery-recycling facility based in the Thorold Multimodal Hub, in Thorold, Ontario.

The Thorold location that we have is, to me, probably one of the most ideal locations in Canada. It's located in the Golden Horseshoe and it's in one of the most populated hubs in the country. So, you know, we're centrally located in the largest automotive cluster in North America. We've got 35,000 square feet, which is right in - I think a some-400-acre multimodal industrial complex. We're adjacent to the Welland Canal, we have access to rail, … in terms of location to install a plant, I really don't think it gets better.

-Ian C. Peres ⁵⁾ Interview audio

The Thorold Multimodal Hub⁶⁾

EVSX has three very highly-automated processing lines … It's a line that can actually process the recycling of batteries with very minimal labour. The batteries drop into one section of the line. They go through a series of hammers and shredders and shaking tables and so on - magnetic separation and so on. The paper is separated from the plastic, the metals, the steel, the aluminum, and the battery metals (so the nickel, the cobalt, etc.). What we do is we effectively repurpose all of those materials back into the supply [chain] … We're able to process well over 16 types of different types of battery chemistries. Irregular batteries (like batteries that are too small), batteries that are deemed to be too resource-intensive by certain processors - we can virtually do anything, so alkaline, nickel-cadmium, lithium, lithium-ion, EV batteries, the whole nine yards.

-Ian C. Peres ⁷⁾ Interview audio

One of the three 10,000 tpy multi-chemistry lines, installed in the Thorold Multimodal Hub⁸⁾

The 4,200 tpy limited-chemistry (alkaline) processing line, installed in the Thorold Multimodal Hub⁹⁾

In July of 2020, it was announced that St-Georges had entered into an agreement to set up a pilot plant within a Québec-based, publicly-funded laboratory named CIMMS.^{10) 11)} At the time of announcement, this was intended to be for the benefit of the lithium work being done by SXM.

In December, St-Georges announced that they had signed a Binding Letter of Intent with Altair International Corp. to apply that same lithium technology to lithium-in-clay-mineral deposits. Part and parcel with this lithium agreement, however, was an agreement to jointly investigate the recycling of EV batteries. This in turn would entail “the design and construction of a battery recycling industrial pilot-plant circuit in St-Georges contracted installations in Québec.” ¹²⁾

In January of 2021, it was announced that St-Georges' battery-recycling initiative had been incorporated as a wholly-owned subsidiary and given a name: EVSX. The deal with Altair stipulated that they have the option of acquiring 49.99% of the common shares of EVSX based on making milestone payments and issuing shares of their own to St-Georges.¹³⁾

In February of 2021, St-Georges announced that they had inked a definitive agreement with Altair that provides Altair with full access to St-Georges' EV battery recycling technology (but no longer makes mention of Altair's option to acquire 49.99% of EVSX).¹⁴⁾

Likewise in February, it was announced that St-Georges had been offered a partnership with a regional industry group in Manicouagan to find a site in Baie-Comeau for the EV battery recycling plant and to navigate the subsequent negotiations and permitting.¹⁵⁾ Meanwhile, mineral characterisation work had already begun progressing at CIMMS.¹⁶⁾

In March of 2021, St-Georges announced that they had entered a definitive partnership with ID Manic to cooperate on a study that would cover “environmental, regulatory permitting, international shipping and port access, and operations.” This was also the first mention of household battery recycling. It was also announced that St-Georges had retained WSP Canada to perform a review of EVSX's chemical processes and engineering as it pertains to battery recycling.¹⁷⁾

In June, the company released the results of their preliminary feasibility study for their proposed battery recycling operation. The study highlighted lack of EV battery availability as a major concern, but clarified that EVSX will be able to counter this by supplementing the availability of EV batteries with domestic rechargeable batteries, commercial batteries, and battery feedstocks.¹⁸⁾

Later in June, the company announced that they had secured a building in Baie-Comeau in which to set up a battery recycling facility.¹⁹⁾

In November of 2021, St-Georges announced that it had entered into an agreement with Wintech to facilitate the deployment of hydrogen production units within its proposed future battery recycling and fertilizer plants.²⁰⁾

In March of 2022, the company announced that they had eliminated their initial Baie-Comeau location secured in June of 2021. Instead, they planned to work with the municipality to secure alternate sites at a fraction of the cost. Meanwhile, EVSX announced its intent to begin recycling nickel-cadmium batteries, and a search for a suitable site was to be undertaken at various locations in Québec and Ontario.²¹⁾

In April of 2022, it was announced that the board of St-Georges had voted to authorize EVSX to move forward with its battery recycling plan. At that time, this plan involved acquiring a facility in Baie-Comeau, Québec and was to involve three different processing circuits.²²⁾

In September of 2022, the company announced that they had signed a binding Memorandum of Understanding with AraBat, which would see an industrial plant established in the Puglia region of Italy. The company also announced the advancement of negotiations to secure North American spent-battery allocation in order to support the company's planned battery processing plants.²³⁾

In December of 2022, it was announced that EVSX had secured a location for its operations in the Thorold Multimodal Hub in the Niagara region of Ontario.²⁴⁾ Later that same month, EVSX announced a Memorandum of Understanding with Call2Recycle,²⁵⁾ a consumer battery recycling organization.

By February of 2023, all of the battery recycling equipment owned by the company at that point had been moved from CIMMS to on-site storage at either the Thorold location or the Baie-Comeau location.²⁶⁾ By May of 2023, the equipment at Thorold pertaining to alkaline battery recycling had been installed.²⁷⁾

In March of 2024 EVSX was granted an Environmental Compliance Approval for operating the alkaline battery line at Thorold,²⁸⁾ subject to certain conditions.

On July 17th, St Georges Eco-Mining and Call2Recycle Canada jointly announced the operational launch of EVSX's battery processing plant in Thorold, Ontario.²⁹⁾

On July 22nd, EVSX produced their first batch of black mass after processing a small volume of alkaline batteries.³⁰⁾

On November 5th, EVSX announced that they had “successfully completed processing every alkaline and zinc-carbon battery type supplied by Call2Recycle using the initial 4,200-ton-per-year battery processing line”, thereby marking completion of the commissioning phase of the alkaline battery line. ³¹⁾. At this time, they also announced the appointment of Ian C. Peres as CEO of EVSX.

Later that month, EVSX announced that they had commenced the installation of one of their three multi-chemistry lines within the Thorold facility. ³²⁾ They also indicated that they had secured financing to support both the installation of this line and the commencement of operations.

On December 24th, EVSX announced that they had completed installation of the first multi-chemistry line in the Thorold facility. ³³⁾

On February 6th, EVSX announced that during the process of commissioning the multi-chemistry line, they updated the facility's layout to maximize staging of both inputs and outputs, and they increased the multi-chemistry line's capacity to handle EV batteries. They also announced the creation of a new battery processing line (referred to as the “Circuit”) made of components from the second multi-chemistry line and built to complement the multi-chemistry line.³⁴⁾