DISCLOSURE: LIbertyStream is an Equity.Guru marketing client
There’s a point in the development of every new processing technology where investors should stop caring quite so much about the best result the company has ever produced.
A spectacular assay is nice.
A successful test run is encouraging.
A batch of battery-grade lithium carbonate proves you can do it once.
But if you’re trying to build an actual lithium business, the thing that eventually matters is if you can do it again. And again. And more next Tuesday,
LibertyStream Infrastructure Partners (TSXV: LIB) is beginning to accumulate a fair amount of ‘again.’
The company reported this week that its Freedom Launchpad operation in Howard County, Texas, has now spent three months consistently producing battery-grade lithium carbonate with its direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology.
Since the refining system was configured for battery-grade production in May, every full certificate of analysis through August 14 has reported lithium carbonate purity of at least 99.7%.
The generally accepted battery-grade threshold is 99.5%.
Following the May transition to battery-grade targeting, nine consecutive certificates of analysis cleared that mark.
That’s significant because the DLE business has never suffered from a shortage of companies capable of producing impressive laboratory results. The harder bit is doing it repeatedly, outside the lab, using actual oilfield brine, while operating something that begins to resemble a commercial process.
To be fair, LibertyStream has tested my patience as an investor and a marketer in the past. Their continuous strong storytelling in the boardroom and at conferences has rarely been matched by their communication with retail investors, believing as they do that ‘the numbers will tell the tale eventually.’
They built a small facility that did eye watering numbers, then a larger facility that did more. And I kept buying along the way. thinking ‘now is the moment they’ll get loud’, only for them to prefer to keep putting their budget into the science and not promotion.
For a promoter like me, that’s frustrating.
But LibertyStream has done rather a lot of science in that time and, to be clear, they haven’t missed yet.
The company has processed more than 400,000 barrels of water through its technology since inception, conducted more than 2,500 operating tests since February 2025 and says its field operations have demonstrated average lithium recovery of around 99.5% … in less than 60 minutes.
Let’s just take a minute here to process that. South American lithium producers have to leave their product sitting in the sun for months before they can even think about processing it, and here’s LibertyStream doing it in just 60 minutes?
And to make that happen, they don’t have to drill anything.
In fact, they don’t have to go exploring at all.
They just tap into the existing wastewater lines at oil and gas facilities, run their process, and out the other end comes lithium carbonate – AND cleaner wastewater.
Now the downstream side of the equation is catching up.
Freedom Launchpad, its production, customer-qualification and training platform located at Select Water Solutions’ site in Howard county, Texas, has produced approximately three tonnes of lithium carbonate across battery-grade, technical-grade and customer-specific requirements. The company recently manufactured a tonne of battery grade lithium carbonate specifically to a customer’s required specification, and delivered as requested under LibertyStream’s initial industrial trial order.
That’s right; they’re not just saying ‘we can do lithium’, rather they’re doing it to suit the specific needs of the end user.
To recap;
Making 99.7% lithium carbonate is good science.
Making the exact lithium carbonate somebody wants to buy is good business.
LibertyStream’s earlier customer testing produced lithium carbonate at 99.9% purity while meeting specifications across a lengthy list of impurities including calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium and sulphate.
The latest results suggest that wasn’t a lucky batch.
Since early July, samples have been delivered to four organizations for evaluation, while LibertyStream has separately manufactured material to specifications supplied by three additional prospective customers.
So we’re now talking about seven organizations interacting with actual product rather than looking at a process diagram.
More importantly, one customer has already moved considerably beyond tire-kicking.
LibertyStream has secured its first definitive offtake agreement covering 600 tonnes of lithium carbonate annually beginning in 2027, with an initial delivery schedule of 150 tonnes per quarter.
Put that alongside Freedom 1, the company’s planned 1,000-tonne-per-year commercial facility, and the equivalent of 60% of its intended initial annual production is already spoken for.
LibertyStream also says its broader customer demand pipeline exceeds 10,000 tonnes annually. That’s where this starts becoming a much more interesting proposition.
Because LibertyStream isn’t proposing to build a billion-dollar lithium mine in the desert and spend most of the next decade permitting it. It’s attaching lithium production to infrastructure somebody else has already paid for, that is operating currently.
The Permian Basin oil and gas industry moves more than 20 million barrels of produced water every day. Oil companies have already spent billions drilling wells and constructing the pipelines, water handling facilities, recycling systems and disposal infrastructure required to move the stuff around. Those water handling processes cost a lot of money and present the oil boys with a real bottleneck situation.
LibertyStream wants to stick itself into that existing ecosystem and extract the lithium passing through it, printing money and sharing a piece with their partners.
And, lets be clear, there isn’t much lithium in that water (the company talks about concentrations around 22 parts per million) so it would normally be ‘stuff that gets in the way’ for the oil and gas boys – and that’s which is precisely why its DLE technology is notable.
Its partnership with Select Water Solutions is arguably every bit as important as the chemistry.
Select provides the waste water at the wells, as well as the pre-treatment and recycling infrastructure. LibertyStream provides the DLE and refining technology. Select then receives the cleaner water back and a royalty on the lithium carbonate that has ben removed.
That’s an elegant arrangement because the company supplying LibertyStream’s feedstock has a financial reason to help it scale.
The current Select agreement covers up to four recycling sites, with each contemplated as capable of supporting roughly 1,000 tonnes of annual lithium carbonate production.
And there’s the larger business model. LibertyStream doesn’t need to build one gigantic lithium project. Rather, it needs to build a box that works… and then keep building boxes.
The company’s planned standardized commercial module is approximately 1,000 tonnes per year, with estimated capital requirements of around US$37 million per module.
Management’s first-site economics estimate operating costs of approximately US$6,200 per tonne, including royalties. As of August 31, 2026, battery-grade lithium carbonate (≥99.5%) is roughly US$20,000–$21,000 per tonne on a China ex-VAT spot basis, good for $21 million per year on 1000 tonnes of production.
To reiterate:
Using LibertyStream’s stated US$6,200/tonne opex and a 1,000 tpa plant:
- Revenue: $21.0M/year
- Operating costs: $6.2M/year
- Operating cash margin: $14.8M/year
- Initial capex: $37M
- Simple payback: $37M ÷ $14.8M = 2.5 years
So, roughly 2½ years simple payback, assuming lithium stays around $21,000/t and the plant actually achieves the stated 1,000 tpa production and $6,200/t operating cost.
Those are obviously projections rather than demonstrated commercial economics, and there’s an important difference. Producing three tonnes successfully doesn’t prove LibertyStream can produce 1,000 tonnes annually for $6,200 each. Industrial scale-up has a nasty habit of finding problems that weren’t apparent at lower volumes.
But that’s also what makes Freedom Launchpad more interesting than a conventional pilot plant. It uses the core equipment types, automation and process architecture intended for Freedom 1.
Every production campaign therefore does several jobs at once.
It makes lithium carbonate.
It provides customers with material for qualification.
It trains operators.
It generates operating data.
And it gives LibertyStream the opportunity to discover what’s going to break before multiplying the process into a US$37 million commercial module.
Essentially, they’re rehearsing the factory before building the factory.
LibertyStream’s ambitions don’t end with Freedom 1.
Under its Select relationship, the company envisages a second approximately 1,000-tonne facility in 2027, followed by further modular deployments. Beyond Select, management has identified more than 20 facilities across North America that it believes could potentially accommodate the process.
That’s where the model either becomes extremely interesting or falls apart. Because if Freedom 1 works, LibertyStream doesn’t necessarily need to reinvent the project for Freedom 2, 3 and 4.
- Same basic equipment.
- Same process.
- Existing water infrastructure.
- Different location.
- Copy, paste, produce.
We’re not there yet, of course. But LibertyStream doesn’t need investors to pretend Freedom 1 already works. More than 400,000 barrels processed removes some technology risk. Three months of consistent battery-grade production removes some refining risk. Seven organizations evaluating or specifying product removes some customer risk. A 600-tonne-per-year definitive offtake removes a decent chunk of market risk. And Select removes a meaningful part of the infrastructure and feedstock problem.
Look, DLE companies have traditionally spent years telling investors what their technology could do, maybe, sorta, we think, best case scenario blah blah blah, to the point where boardrooms factor in a ‘yeah sure’ discount when hearing their pitches.
LibertyStream is increasingly generating numbers describing what its equipment is actually, verifiably doing.
The next jump, from tonnes to hundreds and ultimately thousands of tonnes, is unquestionably the big one. But the roadmap isn’t particularly complicated anymore.
- Make lithium.
- Make it repeatedly.
- Make it to somebody else’s specification.
- Sell it.
- Build the 1,000-tonne plant.
- Then do it again.
LibertyStream has made pretty good progress through the first four.
Freedom 1 is where we find out whether “again” can become a business model.
– Chris Parry
FULL DISCLOSURE: LibertyStream is an Equity.Guru marketing client and paid for, and approved, this article. The author has purchased stock in the company and may acquire more, or dispose of same without warning.
