Europe is expanding battery recycling as part of its strategy to reduce dependence on imported critical raw materials, including lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite. As demand for electric vehicles and energy storage grows, recycling facilities are becoming an increasingly important complement to mining, refining and battery manufacturing.
EU Expands Its Battery Recycling Project Pipeline
European raw-materials policy initially concentrated on developing mines and chemical-processing facilities to supply the growing battery industry. Increasingly, the focus is shifting towards recovering materials from manufacturing waste and end-of-life batteries.
The first Strategic Projects selected 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 adds further investment to this pipeline. In the Netherlands, Back to Battery is developing a refinery designed to process black mass recovered from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries. Its targeted materials include manganese, graphite, lithium and nickel.
Germany is also strengthening its position in the battery materials industry. AMG’s Bitterfeld operation has been designated a European Lithium Refining and Recycling Hub under the CRMA. The company is engineering a unit with an annual capacity of 5,000 tonnes, designed to convert recycled lithium carbonate into lithium hydroxide feedstock for further upgrading.
Recycling Offers a Long-Term Alternative to Imported Materials
Europe currently relies heavily on external suppliers for many materials used in battery production. Recycling cannot eliminate this dependence immediately because electric-vehicle and energy-storage markets are still expanding, while relatively few batteries have reached the end of their useful lives compared with the volumes expected in the future.
As larger generations of electric vehicles return for retirement, however, the batteries they contain will create a growing domestic source of secondary raw materials.
Developing recycling infrastructure ahead of that increase is strategically important. Companies need time to establish collection networks, refine recovery technologies, construct processing plants and demonstrate that recovered materials meet battery manufacturers’ specifications. Europe’s recycling capacity can therefore become an important part of its supply-security strategy even before end-of-life battery volumes reach their expected longer-term levels.
Battery Manufacturing and Recycling Move Towards Closed-Loop Supply Chains
Recycling could also reshape the economics of European battery manufacturing. Facilities connected to regional recovery infrastructure may eventually operate within closed-loop systems, allowing manufacturing scrap and retired batteries to supply materials for new battery production.
Such arrangements could help manufacturers retain more material value within Europe and reduce the need to source additional raw materials from external suppliers. The commercial outlook will depend on several factors, including battery chemistry, metal prices, collection costs and the quality of recovered black mass.
High-nickel batteries have a different recoverable material profile from lithium iron phosphate batteries. Lower commodity prices can weaken recycling margins, while inefficient collection systems or inconsistent feedstock quality can increase processing costs. Consequently, policy recognition alone does not guarantee that every announced recycling project will achieve commercial success.
Mining and Recycling Form a More Integrated Battery Supply Chain
Despite these challenges, Europe has a clear strategic incentive to expand battery recycling. Mining determines how much new material enters the supply chain, while recycling influences how much of that material can be recovered and reused before additional supplies are required. The emerging battery industry is therefore moving beyond a linear model based on extraction, refining, manufacturing and disposal.
Instead, mines and refineries provide the initial materials, battery factories turn them into products, and recycling facilities increasingly recover valuable metals for subsequent production cycles. By combining primary mining with domestic battery recycling, Europe aims to strengthen its lithium, nickel and cobalt supply security while building a more circular critical raw materials industry.
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