Our Medet recycling hub (ACT 3) will be a one-stop-shop for critical minerals in the European region, including copper, nickel, lithium, and cobalt.

The 2,200-hectare Medet copper tailings project in central-west Bulgaria is not a mining venture, but an innovative waste-to-value facility. Here we will recycle copper from old mine waste essential for EV batteries, electric motors and charging infrastructure, significantly bolstering Europe’s future battery industry.

On the same site, we will retrofit a brownfield SX-EW Plant to recycle old EV batteries and production scrap from Eastern Europe. A battery recycling circuit will be integrated into its existing leaching refinery and will process battery waste from 24,000 EVs per year. Incremental capital costs to modify the flowsheet to treat end-of-life electric vehicle batteries is substantially lower than a greenfield project.

There are few environmentally friendly options to recycle lithium-ion scrap in Europe given the capital expenditure required and the permitting timeline associated with building a hydrometallurgical facility such as ours, giving Altilium a source of competitive advantage in the rapidly growing Eastern European raw materials supply chain.

By transforming waste such as mine tailings and old batteries into valuable resources, we’re paving the way for low carbon, domestic sources of battery materials for the electrification of transport.