European battery-materials policy is increasingly incorporating recycling alongside mining and chemical processing as the European Union seeks to reduce dependence on external suppliers of lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite. New and previously designated projects are targeting the recovery of battery materials for reuse in industrial supply chains.
The first Strategic Project portfolio under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) included Fortum Hydromet in Finland, Orano’s Hydrometallurgy project in France, POLVOLT in Poland, Portovesme CRM Hub in Italy and Northvolt’s NorthCYCLE project in Sweden. The 2026 selection round expands the pipeline of European battery-recycling investments.
New projects target battery-material recovery
In the Netherlands, Back to Battery is developing a refinery to process black mass recovered from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries. Its targeted materials include manganese, graphite, lithium and nickel.
Germany’s AMG is advancing another part of the recycling and refining chain through its Bitterfeld operation, designated a European Lithium Refining and Recycling Hub under the CRMA.
AMG is also engineering a 5,000-tonne-per-year unit designed to process recycled lithium carbonate and convert it into lithium hydroxide feedstock for further upgrading. The project adds lithium refining capacity linked to the recovery of material from existing battery products.
European battery recycling feedstock is expected to grow
Europe currently imports much of the raw material required by its battery industry. Recycling capacity cannot immediately eliminate that dependence because electric-vehicle and energy-storage markets continue to expand, while the volume of batteries reaching the end of their useful lives remains comparatively limited.
The available feedstock is expected to increase as larger generations of electric-vehicle batteries return from service in significant quantities. These batteries will provide a domestic secondary resource that can supplement newly mined and imported materials.
Recycling capacity is heavily concentrated outside Europe, particularly in material recovery. Establishing European facilities requires time for technology development, plant construction, customer qualification of recovered materials and the creation of collection systems.
Recycling links battery manufacturing with secondary supply
Regional recycling infrastructure could also connect battery gigafactories with a more circular supply chain. Manufacturing scrap and, later, end-of-life batteries can potentially become feedstock for producing new cathode materials, allowing recovered resources to return to battery manufacturing.
The commercial performance of individual projects will depend on battery chemistry and the composition of recovered materials. High-nickel batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries contain different recoverable material values, affecting their recycling economics.
Other factors include commodity prices, collection costs and black-mass quality. Falling metal prices can reduce recycling margins, meaning that announced projects will not necessarily all achieve commercial success. Mining and recycling therefore serve different functions in Europe’s battery-materials supply chain. Mining and refining introduce new materials, while recycling enables recovered metals and other materials to be reused after their initial application, reducing the quantity that must be replaced through additional extraction or imports.
