Altilium

Based in London, Altilium (formerly Altilium Metals) offers a recycling process for spent electric vehicle batteries and a strategy for extracting copper from mine waste that support the transformation of the global energy sector from fossil-based to zero-carbon. The company uses a novel process to extract lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese from used batteries and offers the highest level of recycling efficiency, recovering over 95% of the critical metals and 80% of the battery value, which the company claims is a new global standard. In addition, the company is involved in the mining, refining, and processing of copper, nickel, cobalt, and manganese ores.

As of July 2022, the company had two operational plants; an SX-EW (solvent extraction-electrowinning) hydrometallurgical plant on the largest copper mine waste resource in Eastern Europe and an EV Battery Recycling Technology Centre in Devon, UK to develop materials technologies and perform testing, analysis, and product optimization. The company planned to add copper leaching circuits to recycle battery waste from 24,000 MT electric vehicles annually starting Q2 2023. In August 2022, the company upsized the input processing capacity from 10,000 tons to 50,000 tons of “black mass” annually, in collaboration with the Engineering Consultant Hatch. In November 2022, the company announced plans to build the UK’s largest planned recycling facility for electric vehicle batteries in Teesside slated to start production in 2025, with a capacity to recycle battery waste from more than 150,000 electric vehicles into "cathode active material (CAM)."

Key customers and partnerships

In April 2023, Altilium produced nickel-rich CAM and sent the first batch of samples to Imperial College London for electrochemical performance comparison with commercially manufactured cathodes. In July 2023, they teamed up with Marubeni, a Japanese conglomerate, to co-develop EV battery recycling ventures in the UK and Europe. In October 2023, Altilium partnered with Lunaz, a UK-based upcycling and vehicle electrification company, to reduce carbon emissions in EV battery transportation for recycling.

Funding and financials

In September 2023, Altilium raised nearly USD 2.57 million in Series A funding from SQM Lithium Ventures to scale up its demonstration line and retrofit its SX-EW hydrometallurgical plant in Eastern Europe. In July 2023, the company received GBP 1 million (~USD 1.3 million) in grants from the UK government to transport end-of-life EV batteries to battery recycling stations and design an automated battery recycling facility. In November 2022, Altilium secured GBP 3 million in UK Government innovation funding to scale up its process to extract the metals from spent batteries.