tozero, a Munich-based female-founded battery recycling startup, has launched its first industrial demonstration plant in Germany capable of converting end-of-life batteries into domestic supplies of lithium, graphite, and a nickel-cobalt mixture at scale for the first time.
The plant is situated in Bavaria at Chemical Park Gendorf and was built in a record six months. It can process over 1.500 tonnes of battery waste annually.
According to the company, it can produce 100 tonnes of high-purity lithium carbonate a year from this waste. This is equivalent to saving 10,000 electric vehicles’ worth of batteries from landfill. It will also recover graphite and nickel-cobalt mix at an industrial scale.
Using tozero’s proprietary acid-free, hydrometallurgy process, this recycling takes place in a single, superior cycle, and the recovered materials are pure enough to feed directly back into manufacturing.
“Europe doesn’t yet have the critical raw materials it needs to build and scale its own energy transition and battery industry. Our technology, now scaled 25,000 times, changes this by enabling us to recycle end-of-life batteries and extract these materials at industrial scale for the first time. In just under four years, tozero has gone from lab-scale experiments to industrial operations and we’re consistently proving that recycling isn’t just a pilot project – it can be delivered at a level capable of giving Europe a homegrown, circular supply of critical materials its future runs on,” said Sarah Fleischer, co-founder and CEO of tozero.
Founded in 2022 by Sarah Fleischer, a serial entrepreneur and mechanical engineer, and Dr Ksenija Milicevic Neumann, a leading metallurgy expert, tozero is building Europe’s first industrial infrastructure for lithium-ion battery recycling. Its proprietary process allows for the recovery of high-purity materials like lithium and graphite, which are then reintegrated into the production cycle of batteries and electric vehicles.
According to the company, global lithium demand will quadruple by 2030. Additionally, in the EU alone, graphite demand could increase up to 25 times by 2040, fueled by electric vehicles, large-scale storage, and industrial electrification.
However, it states that Europe remains almost entirely reliant on imports, with China controlling global graphite supplies, and 99% of Europe’s lithium comes from abroad.
“Ironically, Europe is sitting on a stockpile of the very materials it’s scrambling to source in the growing number of end-of-life batteries, largely from Europe’s growth in EVs, across the continent. It hasn’t been possible to recover them effectively until now,” the company mentioned.
tozero sees battery recycling as an increasingly vital process, emerging as a major alternative source of critical raw materials. Leveraging its recycling process, tozero claims to enable this transition without a “green premium”, instead delivering a “green discount”.
The company positions itself as a “miner of tomorrow” and aims to bridge the raw material supply gap sustainably. Its approach reuses current and future materials from this stockpile, reducing reliance on virgin resources. It builds a circular, domestic supply chain to boost Europe’s competitiveness in the global race for next-generation energy technologies.
The startup claims that it has already demonstrated successful qualification of its recycled lithium and graphite for lithium-ion batteries with cathode and anode manufacturers. Its goal is to close the battery materials loop and support Europe’s ambition to achieve greater independence in critical raw materials. This aligns with the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, which calls for 25% of supply to come from recycling sources.
tozero provides Europe with a domestic source of critical materials, reducing dependence on Chinese imports at half the cost of traditional miners. The new facility will supply recycled lithium and graphite to various sectors such as construction, ceramics, and lubricants, with more materials and industries to come.
The German startup indicates that the industrial demo plant will serve as the blueprint for a full-scale commercial operation scheduled for 2030, capable of producing 8,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate and approximately 10.000 tonnes of graphite annually by processing 45,000 tonnes of battery waste.
In April 2024, nine months after launching its pilot plant, it became the first company in Europe to supply recycled lithium to commercial clients. It has since completed pilot projects with BMW, MAN, and other automotive OEMs, achieving a consistent lithium recovery rate of over 80%, already surpassing the EU’s 2031 target. Additionally, in February 2025, it became the first in Europe to qualify 100% recycled graphite for industrial-scale lithium-ion battery cell production.
The company works with partners across 10 European countries, and in 2024, it raised €11 million in an oversubscribed Seed funding round led by NordicNinja.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/03/female-founded-tozero-launches-industrial-battery-recycling-plant-to-build-europes-domestic-supply-of-critical-raw-materials/
