Electric vehicle batteries could spark recycling market
Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson |
As many as 4000 electric vehicle batteries could be recycled and used a source of critical minerals every year after an Australian start-up secured a $12 million funding boost.
Perth-based Renewable Metals announced the investment on Monday, which it said would help to establish a battery-recycling prototype plant in Western Australia and design its first commercial facility in NSW.
The announcement comes one month after a study found battery recycling could boost Australia’s economy by $6.9 billion a year in 2050, and following record electric car sales fuelled by rising fuel prices.
The Series A funding round for Renewable Metals, led by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, collected investments from firms including Climate Tech Partners and European Metal Recycling.
The company uses a patented process to recover 95 per cent of the cobalt, lithium nickel, copper and manganese from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries, and uses a single processing line to extract the material and save costs.
Battery recycling was a growing industry worldwide, Renewable Metals chairman Peter Bevan said, but one that is dominated by Chinese firms.
“Renewable Metals is building a platform that can compete with leading Chinese recyclers at scale, while enabling recovery of critical minerals,” he said.
“That’s critical to building resilient supply chains and reducing dependence on offshore processing as demand accelerates.”
The $12 million investment will support the company’s prototype plant in Kewdale, Western Australia, that is due to operate from mid-2026 and scale up to recycle up to 2000 tonnes of batteries per year, equivalent to 4000 electric car batteries.
A commercial plant in NSW’s Hunter Region is planned to follow, and the investment will also be used to expand its research and engineering teams.
Extracting critical minerals from batteries would become more important as countries introduced recycling mandates and restrictions on exporting waste, Climate Tech Partners co-founder Patrick Sieb said.
Australian households were also using more large-scale batteries, with more than 250,000 installed under the government’s discount scheme and sales of electric vehicles accelerating during March.
“EV adoption has been significantly accelerated because of the Iran war,” he said.
“Australia needs to capture the value chain of battery recycling instead of simply sending products to Asia.”
A Battery Materials Recovery report released on March 12 found the recycling sector contributed $2.1 billion to Australia’s economy in 2025 but could generate $6.9 billion and support 34,650 jobs by 2050.
AAP