Altilium was pleased to welcome award-winning motoring broadcaster and transport campaigner Quentin Willson back to Devon for an exclusive first look inside its new state-of-the art recycling facility and to hear from the company’s leadership team on its ambitious plans to deliver 50% of the UK’s critical battery metals from recycling by 2040.

“The future minerals needed for electrification don’t have to come from mining,” notes Altilium COO and co-founder, Dr Christian Marston, in the film. “We believe that we can give 50% of the lithium, 50% of the nickel and over 80% of the graphite needed for EV batteries from recycling by 2040.”

The film showcases Altilium’s cutting edge technology at its 18,000 square foot ACT 2 recycling facility in Plymouth, where the company is able to recover over 95% of cathode metals from waste EV batteries, enabling production of high volumes of battery materials for qualification with automotive customers.

“It’s really exciting that we’re doing processes in this company at scales that no one in the UK has ever done before,” Altilium’s CTO Dr Ben Wickham told the filmmakers. “What we’ve managed to achieve this year is recycling to produce a first-rate material that shows real equivalence with commercially available materials.”

According to recent research carried out by Imperial College London, Altilium’s recycled EV battery materials can match, and even surpass, the performance of virgin mined materials, enabling longer battery life, faster charging times and lower costs.

The film also highlights the pioneering work being carried at the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC), which has recently begun processing Altilium’s recycled cathode active materials (CAM) for the production of battery cathodes, another UK first.

Speaking about the project, Richard LeCain, CTO at UKBIC, commented: “As the industry evolves, we want more performance all the time, and we need to deal with the cost of the materials and the supply of the material. Recycling is a big part of that to help alleviate those concerns.”