![\"Battery](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/uk-takes-charge-in-ev-battery-recycling-revolution.jpg\" "\\"Battery")
<\/a><\/p>\nNew recycling centre is capable of producing the key ingredients of battery cells on an industrial scale<\/p>\n
The UK\u2019s ambition to become a major centre of EV battery manufacture is one step closer as work begins on its first integrated lithium-ion battery recycling and refining facility that is capable of producing the key ingredients of battery cells on an industrial scale.<\/p>\n
The new plant in Plymouth is the penultimate stage in British company Altilium\u2019s four-part plan, which will culminate in the creation of a refinery on Teesside. When it goes live at the end of 2027, this is slated to produce highquality, recycled cathode active material (CAM) for UK gigafactories.<\/p>\n
Until then, the Plymouth plant will produce recycled nickel mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP) and lithium sulphate \u2013 critical intermediate materials for domestic production of battery cathodes used by a range of industries.<\/p>\n
Creating the CAM used in EV batteries requires expensive refining. Efforts in this direction have been boosted by rules governing new EV batteries sold in the EU that state they will need to have minimum levels of recycled lithium, nickel and cobalt from 2031, with further increases in 2036.<\/p>\n
Altilium has developed a process for extracting and processing these metals to the required quality and earlier this year announced it had produced, at the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre, the UK\u2019s first EV battery cells using recycled\u00a0CAM and complying with those regulations.<\/p>\n
Why domestic battery recycling is ‘vital’<\/h2>\n
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The news comes in the wake of a report by the government on battery recycling in the UK. It says a secure supply of critical minerals \u2013 such as lithium and cobalt \u2013 is vital for economic growth and security. However, the country is currently reliant on the international market, especially China, to supply most of these minerals.<\/p>\n
One solution, it says, lies in the recycling of lithium ion batteries from the growing volume of endof-life EVs, which, it claims, \u201ccould supply between 39% and 57% of the demand for lithium, cobalt and nickel by 2040\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, the cost of such work can be prohibitive. Altilium says its approach underlines the sector\u2019s fi nely balanced economics. \u201cWe\u2019re always looking to optimise our processes to make them cost-effective,\u201d said Altilium spokesperson Dominic Schreiber. \u201cWe\u2019re scaling progressively and, crucially, validating everything to ensure we\u00a0de-risk the business at every stage. Until our Teesside plant comes on stream, our intermediate material will be a necessary income generator.\u201d<\/p>\n
When that day dawns, Altilium\u2019s customers for its Teesside product are likely to include Nissan\u2019s current and forthcoming gigafactories in Sunderland and JLR owner Tata\u2019s site in Somerset.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor car and\u00a0battery makers keen to reduce their carbon footprint as well as meet the new EU battery regulations, it won\u2019t make sense to ship in material from elsewhere,\u201d said Schreiber. \u201cThe battery is an EV\u2019s biggest single source of embedded carbon. One with CAM made from recycled metals has up to 74% fewer embedded emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Altilium uses a third-party\u00a0supplier to handle the first stage of its recycling process. This involves shredding used batteries and extracting their crucial metals in the form of a powder called black mass, which Altilium then refines.<\/p>\n
Most of the feedstock comprises failed and damaged batteries, rather than those at the end of their useful life. There are no accurate figures on how many end-of-life batteries exist but the industry expects to see appreciable numbers of them coming to the market after 2030.<\/p>\n
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Refining black mass is the goal<\/h2>\n
Meanwhile, the UK\u2019s first at-scale lithium ion battery recycling plant owned by Recyclus Group has just dispatched 111 tonnes of black mass to Glencore, a global mining and recycling company, which, like Altilium, will separate out the metals and refine them but using its own process.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince we started recycling at scale in 2023, our output of black mass has increased year on year,\u201d said Robin Brundle, Recyclus Group co-founder and director. \u201cThis year, we plan to process 5000 tonnes of batteries but we have the capacity to process 22,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recyclus\u2019s plant in Wolverhampton handles all types and sizes of used lithium ion batteries, with used EV batteries accounting for around 60%.<\/p>\n
Brundle says the firm has cracked the recycling side in terms of harvesting black mass and now, like Altilium, is planning to move into processing. \u201cThe holy grail is refining the metals in black mass to such a quality that they can go back into an EV battery,\u201d he said. \u201cWith an automotive company, we\u2019re developing a pilot plant that will separate and purify the black mass at scale here in the UK to exactly that level, while minimising the number of \u2018touchpoints\u2019 in the process so that it is economic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brundle believes that if successful, the firm\u2019s move into processing will, in around five years, coincide with car and battery makers wanting back their old batteries to extract, process and reuse black mass in their new ones. \u201cWe\u2019ll be able to put our plant under their roof and do the work for them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65359,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-featured","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}