About Us

Our mission

Mangrove’s mission is to leverage our breakthrough lithium refining technology to unlock a battery powered, clean energy future. We are committed to applying our technology to help mitigate the effects of climate change by bringing more lithium and electric vehicles to the market.

Mangrove Lithium’s mission is to create domestic lithium supply chains by bringing processing and refining to where it is needed most – alongside lithium producers, battery manufacturers and end-of-life battery recyclers.

Our vision

Mangrove’s process will make battery-grade lithium vastly more available and allow wide-scale electric vehicle adoption. Our patented technology provides the most effective and economical option for high-purity lithium conversion. We are focused on the battery value chain for extractors, refiners, and battery manufacturers worldwide.

Leadership

Saad Dara

CEO & Co-founder

Dr. Dara is an entrepreneur with a track record of taking research from the lab bench to a commercial scale.

David St. Angelo

Chief Technology Officer

David brings over 30-years experience in sustainable technology commercialization, plant construction, technoeconomic analysis, and technical operations leadership.

Annie Liu

Chief Commercial & Strategy Officer

Annie is a supply chain expert, having spent 20+ years in building and leading teams across stages from incubation to rapid growth and scale-up. Annie was formerly the Executive Director at Ford (Model E) and Head of Supply Chain, Battery and Energy at Tesla.

Briac de Chardon

VP Engineering and Projects

Briac is a leader of technology development projects and has a track record of innovation and IP generation from the idea phase through to commercialization.

Priscila Costa Lima

Director Finance and Administration

Priscila is a Finance and Accounting Executive with a proven track record in the junior mining/resource industry.

Grant Boyle

General Counsel

Grant brings over 15 years of experience as a business lawyer in major projects and clean technology. Grant was formerly with Carbon Engineering, AtkinsRéalis (previously SNC-Lavalin), and McCarthy Tétrault.

Board of Directors

Vivian Kan

Board Director

Vivian is an investment director in BDC Capital’s Cleantech Practice with over 18 years of experience in financial and contract risk analysis, commercial and corporate finance, business development and venture capital.

Christina Karapataki

Board Director

Christina is an investor with experience building companies and commercializing technology in the energy and sustainability sectors. With Breakthrough Energy Ventures, she focuses on decarbonization solutions for the electricity, transportation and manufacturing sectors.

Alfred Lam

Co-Founder and Director

Alfred is an innovator, company builder and investor with 10+ years R&D experience in electrochemical systems,. He helped incubate and grow Mangrove and is currently a Partner at Chrysalix Venture Capital.

Richard Reese

Board Director

Richard joined the Mangrove board in 2017, and offers strategy, business development, operations and finance insight gained over the past three decades as an engineer, general manager and executive.

Advisors

David Wilkinson

Co-Founder and Technical Advisor

Dr. Wilkinson is a Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) at the University of British Columbia. Before joining academia, Dr. Wilkinson was VP-Research at Ballard Power Systems and Moli Energy. Dr. Wilkinson was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2020 for his contributions to electrochemical science and technology.

Arman Bonakdarpour

Co-Founder and Technical Advisor

Arman has an extensive R&D background in clean technology sector covering diverse areas such as water treatment, CO2 conversion, advanced batteries and hydrogen energy technologies. His work has led to over 55 peer-reviewed and highly cited scientific publications and a number of patent/patent applications.

Our Story

Lab Scale Demonstration for water treatment

Mangrove Water completes the 1st lab scale demonstration.
Secured $500k from Round 1 ERA Grand Challenge winners.
Secured $450k from Western Economic Diversification

2013-2015

2016-2018

First Commercial Scale Demonstration for water treatment

Mangrove Water completes the first commercial scale electrochemical cell testing.
Secured $3M from Round 2 ERA Grand Challenge winners.
Spun out from Wilkinson Research Group at UBC Chemical Engineering.
Graduated from Creative Destruction Labs Rockies.

Commercial testing facility built for water treatment

Mangrove Water builds fully integrated commercial demonstration system.
Secured $2.1M the Sustainable Development Technology Canada for a demonstration with Canadian Natural.

2019-2020

2020-2021

Pivot to lithium and commercial demonstration

Mangrove Lithium completes the design of the first commercial module.
Conducted demonstrations with key lithium customers.
Mangrove secures $3M financing from BDC Capital's Cleantech Practice.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures and BDC Capital Investment

Breakthrough Energy Ventures and BDC Capital invests $10M in Mangrove.

2021

2022

BMW i Ventures and Breakthrough Energy Ventures investment

BMW i Ventures and Breakthrough Energy Ventures invest in Mangrove, bringing the total funds raised by Mangrove’s executive team to $25 million USD. These investments will be used to accelerate the launch of a commercial-scale plant.

Partnership with DeNora

Mangrove partners with De Nora to supply electrochemical equipment for their lithium refining system.

2023

2024–2025

Commercial Launch & Growth

Secured $35M in strategic financing from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, BMW i Ventures, BDC Capital, Mitsubishi Corporation, Asahi Kasei, InBC, Orion Industrial Ventures, and Export Development Canada
Began construction of first commercial facility. The Single Stack Plat (SSP) is a 1 ktpa plant located in Delta, BC