Honda-backed startup opens battery recycling plant in first for Europe

This article was updated with comments from tozero's CEO Sarah Fleischer.

Munich startup tozero has opened what it says is Europe's first industrial-scale demonstration plant capable of recovering lithium, graphite and nickel-cobalt blends from end-of-life batteries at commercial scale.

The plant, located at Chemical Park Gendorf in Germany, was built in six months. It can process more than 1,500 tonnes of battery waste annually, producing over 100 tonnes of high-purity lithium carbonate – the equivalent of keeping 6,000 EV battery packs out of landfill each year.

Global lithium demand is forecast to quadruple by 2030, while EU graphite demand could rise 25-fold by 2040. China controls 90% of global graphite refining and 99% of Europe's lithium is imported.

"Europe's overwhelming dependency on imported critical materials isn't a new problem; it's a structural one that's been building for years," tozero's CEO and co-founder Sarah Fleischer tells Impact Loop. "What's ramped up recently is the urgency from governments, businesses and institutions. Sovereignty and supply chain stability is now a top priority rather than just one of many."

Backing from Japan

NordicNinja, a European VC fund with Japanese LPs, led Tozero’s €11m Series A funding round in late 2024, bringing its total raised to €17mn. Other investors include automotive giant Honda, US venture firm In-Q-Tel, and Japanese engineering group JGC.

The suite of Japanese investors offers strategic value, says Fleischer.

"Japan has long been at the forefront of battery innovation and understands better than most what it takes to build resilient, high-quality material supply at scale," she says. "We've deliberately partnered with investors who get the challenge as much as they believe in what we're building."

Fresh funding?

The Gendorf plant is designed as a blueprint for a full-scale commercial facility planned for 2030, targeting a capacity of tens of thousands of tonnes of battery waste per year.

Despite the ambitious plans to scale, Fleischer did not indicate that tozero was presently raising fresh capital.

"Our focus at the moment is on the plant, our customers and continuing to execute on our roadmap," she says.

The battery race

Fleischer, a mechanical engineer and serial entrepreneur, founded tozero in 2022 alongside metallurgy specialist Dr. Ksenija Milicevic Neumann. A metallurgy specialist, Neumann spent years at Germany's RWTH Aachen developing a breakthrough water-based carbonation process for extracting lithium and other elements like graphite from black mass. This powdery substance is produced after shredding and processing spent batteries.

Tozero can technically just keep on growing as long as it receives a continuous supply of old batteries. And that shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Lithium-ion production is set to almost quadruple by 2030. Meanwhile, regulations like the EU’s Battery Directive –which calls for at least 80% of lithium to be recovered from batteries by 2031 – add much-needed incentives. This is only good news for Tozero and other recycling upstarts, including German startup Cylib, which is currently building Europe’s largest recycling plant for EV batteries.

"It’s not a winner takes it all market as we’ll see an exponential growth in black mass supply in the near future," Fleischer says.