Image inspiration - René Magritte - link
British government's have spent much of the last decade worrying about how quickly we can replace petrol and diesel cars with electric ones. A whole new different question is now beginning to emerge.
What happens when all those electric cars start dying? Not the cars particularly but the batteries. Millions of lithium-ion battery packs are steadily entering the British vehicle fleet and although most should remain useful for many years, they won't last forever. Some will fail, some will be damaged in accidents and others will simply reach the end of their useful automotive life. At that point Britain will begin receiving an entirely new waste stream containing lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt, graphite, copper and aluminium and it's going to become a very large one indeed.
This is where companies such as Altilium become important. Its proposed ACT3 facility in Plymouth is intended to recover lithium, nickel materials and graphite from battery waste rather than simply producing black mass. The project received £18.5 million of government support in 2026 and is intended to begin commissioning towards the end of 2027. A much larger future facility proposed for Teesside could eventually process material equivalent to around 150,000 EV batteries every year. If projects like these succeed, Britain could begin creating something resembling a domestic battery materials industry and that changes the entire conversation because an old EV battery isn't simply waste. It's effectively a box containing concentrated raw materials that somebody has already gone to the trouble of mining, refining and transporting halfway around the world.
Who pays?
There will probably never be one standard price for recycling an electric vehicle battery. Some batteries will be valuable; some may be taken away at little or no cost whilst others could be extremely expensive to deal with. A good illustration comes from the emerging UK market for used EV batteries. An industry battery value index recently placed a first-generation Nissan Leaf battery with sufficient remaining condition for possible repair or reuse at around £550.00 positive value. The same type of battery in sufficiently poor condition that it was suitable only for recycling was valued at approximately minus £2,000 i.e. one battery might earn you money whilst the other might require somebody to pay £2k to get rid of it.
Many older electric vehicles use battery chemistries containing nickel and cobalt, both relatively valuable metals. Increasing numbers of newer EVs use lithium iron phosphate — LFP — batteries. LFP has several advantages. It's comparatively cheap, durable and avoids expensive nickel and cobalt. Unfortunately those same advantages make it considerably less attractive to recyclers.
European recycling markets have already seen substantial gate fees quoted for LFP batteries because the materials recovered from them may not cover the cost of processing. So one of the strange consequences of improving battery technology could be that batteries become cheaper to manufacture but more expensive to recycle.
Under current UK rules, EV traction batteries are classed as industrial batteries. As such, battery producers have responsibilities for the collection, treatment and recycling of them and under certain circumstances must provide take back without charging the end user. That doesn't mean recycling is free. It simply means the cost moves somewhere else within the system. Manufacturers, compliance schemes, dismantlers, insurers and ultimately consumers may all contribute to paying for it.
There will also be batteries valuable enough for recyclers or second life businesses to pay for and there will be damaged batteries that nobody sensible wants anywhere near an ordinary vehicle. A crashed or thermally damaged lithium-ion battery can require specialist handling, packaging and transport because of the risk of fire and thermal runaway. At that point the value of the lithium inside becomes rather less exciting than the question of how you safely move several hundred kilograms of potentially unstable battery.
The complication is that the project is not currently moving towards production. In 2026 it was placed into care and maintenance while Imerys sought a long-term partner and reconsidered capital allocation. A separate company, Cornish Lithium, is continuing to develop its Trelavour project, which is targeting up to 10,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium hydroxide a year.
Potentially, Britain could eventually have both ends of the chain: lithium extracted in Cornwall at one end, and lithium recovered from dead EV batteries at the other. The interesting question is whether we can build the industrial middle before somebody else does it for us.
For decades Britain has worried about its dependence on imported raw materials. Lithium comes from overseas, as does nickel, cobalt and graphite supply is heavily concentrated internationally yet during the next twenty years we are going to quietly accumulate enormous quantities of all of them inside vehicles travelling around British roads and eventually those materials come back. The important question is whether Britain develops the infrastructure to keep them here because there are two possible futures.
In one, Britain collects old electric vehicle batteries, dismantles them, produces black mass and exports it for somebody else to refine. In the other, those batteries become the beginning of a domestic source of lithium, nickel, graphite, copper and other materials capable of feeding directly back into manufacturing. The first generation of electric cars was largely built using materials mined around the world. The next generation might increasingly be built from the remains of the first meaning that maybe Britain's largest future battery mine won't be underground at all, It'll be parked outside. More like this (Cornwall) - link - more like this (sodium-ion) - link - more like this (black mass) - link
What happens when all those electric cars start dying? Not the cars particularly but the batteries. Millions of lithium-ion battery packs are steadily entering the British vehicle fleet and although most should remain useful for many years, they won't last forever. Some will fail, some will be damaged in accidents and others will simply reach the end of their useful automotive life. At that point Britain will begin receiving an entirely new waste stream containing lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt, graphite, copper and aluminium and it's going to become a very large one indeed.
When does the wave hit?
For most of the 2020s, much of the battery material entering recycling plants is expected to come from manufacturing waste, damaged batteries, accident write-offs and the relatively small number of older electric vehicles reaching the end of their lives. That will begin to change around the start of the next decade. Research associated with the Faraday Institution has previously suggested that around 28,000 tonnes of EV batteries could require recycling in Britain by 2030.
More recent modelling from the Advanced Propulsion Centre suggests around 2031–32, batteries coming from retired electric vehicles are expected to overtake battery manufacturing scrap as the main source of material entering the recycling system. Then the numbers really start climbing. Earlier government planning estimates suggested Britain could eventually be dealing with something approaching 150,000 tonnes of EV batteries every year by the middle of the 2030s. The exact figure will inevitably move. Cars may last longer. Batteries may be repaired. Some vehicles will be exported. Some batteries may spend several more years operating as stationary energy storage before finally reaching recycling but the direction is difficult to argue with.
• The first substantial wave arrives around 2030.
• The much bigger one follows during the 2030s.
For most of the 2020s, much of the battery material entering recycling plants is expected to come from manufacturing waste, damaged batteries, accident write-offs and the relatively small number of older electric vehicles reaching the end of their lives. That will begin to change around the start of the next decade. Research associated with the Faraday Institution has previously suggested that around 28,000 tonnes of EV batteries could require recycling in Britain by 2030.
More recent modelling from the Advanced Propulsion Centre suggests around 2031–32, batteries coming from retired electric vehicles are expected to overtake battery manufacturing scrap as the main source of material entering the recycling system. Then the numbers really start climbing. Earlier government planning estimates suggested Britain could eventually be dealing with something approaching 150,000 tonnes of EV batteries every year by the middle of the 2030s. The exact figure will inevitably move. Cars may last longer. Batteries may be repaired. Some vehicles will be exported. Some batteries may spend several more years operating as stationary energy storage before finally reaching recycling but the direction is difficult to argue with.
• The first substantial wave arrives around 2030.
• The much bigger one follows during the 2030s.
Can Britain recycle them?
Britain already has industrial lithium-ion battery recycling capability. Recyclus operates a lithium-ion recycling facility in Wolverhampton capable of dismantling and processing batteries into materials including copper, aluminium and black mass which is essentially the valuable powder left after battery cells have been shredded and separated containing materials including lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite.
The UK currently has around 17,000 tonnes per year of mechanical battery pre-treatment capacity according to recent Advanced Propulsion Centre estimates. By 2030 this could exceed 60,000 tonnes per year. If Britain expects around 28,000 tonnes of EV batteries requiring recycling around 2030, then theoretically the country may actually have enough capacity to dismantle and shred them but shredding is the easy part. Britain needs facilities capable of taking black mass and recovering the individual materials to a quality suitable for manufacturing new batteries otherwise we'll simply be dismantling the batteries here and exporting the valuable part overseas for someone else to refine allowing them to make the serious money from it.
Britain already has industrial lithium-ion battery recycling capability. Recyclus operates a lithium-ion recycling facility in Wolverhampton capable of dismantling and processing batteries into materials including copper, aluminium and black mass which is essentially the valuable powder left after battery cells have been shredded and separated containing materials including lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite.
The UK currently has around 17,000 tonnes per year of mechanical battery pre-treatment capacity according to recent Advanced Propulsion Centre estimates. By 2030 this could exceed 60,000 tonnes per year. If Britain expects around 28,000 tonnes of EV batteries requiring recycling around 2030, then theoretically the country may actually have enough capacity to dismantle and shred them but shredding is the easy part. Britain needs facilities capable of taking black mass and recovering the individual materials to a quality suitable for manufacturing new batteries otherwise we'll simply be dismantling the batteries here and exporting the valuable part overseas for someone else to refine allowing them to make the serious money from it.
Building the next stage
This is where companies such as Altilium become important. Its proposed ACT3 facility in Plymouth is intended to recover lithium, nickel materials and graphite from battery waste rather than simply producing black mass. The project received £18.5 million of government support in 2026 and is intended to begin commissioning towards the end of 2027. A much larger future facility proposed for Teesside could eventually process material equivalent to around 150,000 EV batteries every year. If projects like these succeed, Britain could begin creating something resembling a domestic battery materials industry and that changes the entire conversation because an old EV battery isn't simply waste. It's effectively a box containing concentrated raw materials that somebody has already gone to the trouble of mining, refining and transporting halfway around the world.
Who pays?
There will probably never be one standard price for recycling an electric vehicle battery. Some batteries will be valuable; some may be taken away at little or no cost whilst others could be extremely expensive to deal with. A good illustration comes from the emerging UK market for used EV batteries. An industry battery value index recently placed a first-generation Nissan Leaf battery with sufficient remaining condition for possible repair or reuse at around £550.00 positive value. The same type of battery in sufficiently poor condition that it was suitable only for recycling was valued at approximately minus £2,000 i.e. one battery might earn you money whilst the other might require somebody to pay £2k to get rid of it.
Many older electric vehicles use battery chemistries containing nickel and cobalt, both relatively valuable metals. Increasing numbers of newer EVs use lithium iron phosphate — LFP — batteries. LFP has several advantages. It's comparatively cheap, durable and avoids expensive nickel and cobalt. Unfortunately those same advantages make it considerably less attractive to recyclers.
European recycling markets have already seen substantial gate fees quoted for LFP batteries because the materials recovered from them may not cover the cost of processing. So one of the strange consequences of improving battery technology could be that batteries become cheaper to manufacture but more expensive to recycle.
Who actually gets the bill?
Under current UK rules, EV traction batteries are classed as industrial batteries. As such, battery producers have responsibilities for the collection, treatment and recycling of them and under certain circumstances must provide take back without charging the end user. That doesn't mean recycling is free. It simply means the cost moves somewhere else within the system. Manufacturers, compliance schemes, dismantlers, insurers and ultimately consumers may all contribute to paying for it.
There will also be batteries valuable enough for recyclers or second life businesses to pay for and there will be damaged batteries that nobody sensible wants anywhere near an ordinary vehicle. A crashed or thermally damaged lithium-ion battery can require specialist handling, packaging and transport because of the risk of fire and thermal runaway. At that point the value of the lithium inside becomes rather less exciting than the question of how you safely move several hundred kilograms of potentially unstable battery.
Britain's future mine
There is another reason why the idea of a domestic battery-material economy should not be dismissed too quickly. Britain may eventually be able to source some of the lithium itself. In Cornwall, Imerys British Lithium has identified a very large lithium-bearing granite resource near St Austell and demonstrated the production of battery grade lithium carbonate at pilot scale. The proposed commercial project was designed to produce around 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate a year, enough, according to UK government estimates, to support roughly 500,000 electric vehicles annually.
There is another reason why the idea of a domestic battery-material economy should not be dismissed too quickly. Britain may eventually be able to source some of the lithium itself. In Cornwall, Imerys British Lithium has identified a very large lithium-bearing granite resource near St Austell and demonstrated the production of battery grade lithium carbonate at pilot scale. The proposed commercial project was designed to produce around 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate a year, enough, according to UK government estimates, to support roughly 500,000 electric vehicles annually.
The complication is that the project is not currently moving towards production. In 2026 it was placed into care and maintenance while Imerys sought a long-term partner and reconsidered capital allocation. A separate company, Cornish Lithium, is continuing to develop its Trelavour project, which is targeting up to 10,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium hydroxide a year.
Potentially, Britain could eventually have both ends of the chain: lithium extracted in Cornwall at one end, and lithium recovered from dead EV batteries at the other. The interesting question is whether we can build the industrial middle before somebody else does it for us.
For decades Britain has worried about its dependence on imported raw materials. Lithium comes from overseas, as does nickel, cobalt and graphite supply is heavily concentrated internationally yet during the next twenty years we are going to quietly accumulate enormous quantities of all of them inside vehicles travelling around British roads and eventually those materials come back. The important question is whether Britain develops the infrastructure to keep them here because there are two possible futures.
In one, Britain collects old electric vehicle batteries, dismantles them, produces black mass and exports it for somebody else to refine. In the other, those batteries become the beginning of a domestic source of lithium, nickel, graphite, copper and other materials capable of feeding directly back into manufacturing. The first generation of electric cars was largely built using materials mined around the world. The next generation might increasingly be built from the remains of the first meaning that maybe Britain's largest future battery mine won't be underground at all, It'll be parked outside. More like this (Cornwall) - link - more like this (sodium-ion) - link - more like this (black mass) - link
No comments:
Post a Comment