Electric vehicles (EVs) help reduce carbon emissions and make UK cities cleaner and healthier by reducing pollution-related illnesses. The growth of electric vehicle sales in the UK in 2020 was up 180% in a year when new car sales were the lowest for 28 years.

The challenge of how to deal with an increasing stockpile of batteries will soon become pressing to stop batteries ending up in landfill sites. End-of-life batteries also serve as a valuable secondary source of metals such as nickel, cobalt, and lithium, which are in scare supply.

Altilitech LTD is a critical metals company focused on providing low-cost and sustainable supply solutions for clean transportation and recycling. It has developed a new chemical process that recycles lithium ion batteries from electric vehicles at the end of their useful life. The process has already been proven at the laboratory scale under a research program in partnership with the University of Plymouth

As the next step in the development of an industrial-scale recycling process, Altilitech have designed a 12 month program of Industrial Research to design and develop the industrial processes required to scale-up the process and create a stable, predictable recycling workflow capable of processing 400 kg per day of battery waste. Establishing technical feasibility of the technology at pilot scale is critical to us demonstrating EV battery recycling in the UK is both technically and commercial viable and provide the UK its own source of critical metals.

A successful project will trigger the internal investment decision for the first large-scale plant in the UK processing 10,000 MT of batteries per year and will create 40-50 high skilled jobs by 2025\.