Tozero has inaugurated Europe’s first facility dedicated to industrial battery recycling.

      The Munich-based startup has launched a demonstration plant at Chemical Park Gendorf in Bavaria, which processes 1,500 tonnes of battery waste annually and produces 100 tonnes of high-purity lithium carbonate, stating that their costs are twice as competitive as those of traditional miners. A larger facility is planned for 2030, which will handle 45,000 tonnes per year.

      Europe is facing a hidden battery dilemma. Across the continent, numerous end-of-life electric vehicles are parked in driveways, stacked in garages, or decaying in junkyards, containing the lithium, graphite, and nickel-cobalt that European manufacturers are struggling to import.

      Previously, no company had developed a process to recover these materials on an industrial scale. However, tozero, a deeptech startup from Munich that was founded in 2022, claims to have achieved this, and has officially commenced operations.

      The industrial demonstration plant at Chemical Park Gendorf benefits from pre-existing industrial infrastructure, allowing tozero to set up the facility in about six months. The plant is now capable of processing over 1,500 tonnes of battery waste each year, yielding more than 100 tonnes of high-purity lithium carbonate.

      Tozero's proprietary acid-free hydrometallurgical method operates in a single cycle, distinguishing it from traditional pyrometallurgical recycling processes that retrieve copper and aluminum while losing lithium and graphite. This innovative approach yields materials pure enough to be directly reused in battery cell manufacturing without further refinement.

      The commercial progress made is tangible and independently validated. By April 2024, just nine months after the pilot facility in Munich opened, tozero became the first European company to supply recycled lithium to commercial clients. Furthermore, in February 2025, it was the first in Europe to qualify 100% recycled graphite for lithium-ion battery cell production on an industrial scale.

      The demonstration plant unites both achievements at a significant scale and will serve as a model for a full-scale commercial facility designed to process 45,000 tonnes of battery waste annually, with production targets of around 8,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate and approximately 10,000 tonnes of graphite by 2030.

      Founded in July 2022 by Sarah Fleischer, a serial entrepreneur and mechanical engineer, along with Dr. Ksenija Milicevic Neumann, a metallurgy specialist whose groundbreaking research at RWTH Aachen University, published in Nature, underpins the company's technology, tozero has successfully completed pilot projects with BMW, MAN, and other automotive OEMs, showcasing a stable lithium recovery rate that exceeds 80%. This figure aligns with the EU’s mandatory target set for 2031 under the Battery Directive.

      The company's funding comes from a diverse investor base, including NordicNinja, Atlantic Labs, Honda, the JGC Group via Mirai Corporate Venture Capital, Verve Ventures, Possible Ventures, and In-Q-Tel, the strategic investment division of the US intelligence community, complemented by a €2.5 million grant from the EIC Accelerator, bringing total funding to approximately €17 million.

      The current geopolitical landscape makes this timing notable, as China dominates the global graphite supply and processes a significant portion of the world's lithium, leaving Europe largely reliant on imports for both materials. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act obligates that 25% of supply comes from recycling, a target that battery recyclers like tozero are positioned to fulfill. Global lithium demand is anticipated to increase fourfold by 2030 due to the growth of electric vehicles and large-scale energy storage, while demand for graphite in Europe could surge by up to 25 times by 2040.

      The Gendorf facility represents an initial, albeit small, industrial response to a supply issue that Europe has yet to confront on a larger scale.