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Perth-based lithium-ion battery recycler Renewable Metals has closed a $12 million oversubscribed Series A funding round to commercialise its alkali-based hydrometallurgical process, which the company says can recover more than 95 per cent of critical minerals from all battery chemistries on a single processing line.
The round was led by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), managed through its Virescent Ventures arm, and was upsized from an initial $8 million target after strong investor demand.
Total funding raised by Renewable Metals since inception now exceeds $38 million, including support from Australian and UK government sources.
The capital will be used to advance the company's prototype plant in Kewdale, Western Australia, which has an initial design capacity of 960 tonnes per annum ramping to 2,000 tonnes per annum.
Full operations at the facility are expected from mid-2026 through early 2028, with a first commercial-scale plant planned for the Hunter region of NSW.
The news comes a little over two years after Renewable Metals secured an $8 million seed round that included investment from UK-based metals recycler EMR, which committed to building a demonstrator plant in Birmingham using the company's technology.
Renewable Metals' process differs from conventional acid-based hydrometallurgical methods by using an alkali-based approach that avoids producing sodium sulphate, a low-value waste byproduct that creates disposal challenges.
The company claims the process recovers up to 30 per cent more lithium than acid-based alternatives and can handle both nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery chemistries on a single line - a capability its backers say is rare in the industry.
“Today, battery recycling is dominated by China, with Western markets reliant on exporting materials offshore for processing," says Renewable metals chairman Peter Beaven.
"Renewable Metals is building a platform that can compete with leading Chinese recyclers at scale, while enabling recovery of critical minerals in Western cost environments and beyond.
"That’s critical to building resilient supply chains and reducing dependence on offshore processing as demand accelerates.”
CEO Luan Atkinson says the company's approach is designed to avoid the capital-intensive overbuild that has hampered other recycling ventures.
“Our process changes the economics of battery recycling," she says.
"By delivering high recovery at low cost without large, centralised facilities, we can build plants sized for near term feedstock, and scale with the market over time.
"This avoids capital intensive overbuild while enabling a distributed network close to feedstock sources globally, reducing the cost and complexity of transporting hazardous materials.”
Blair Pritchard, partner at Virescent Ventures, says the ability to process multiple battery chemistries on a single line was a key factor in the CEFC's investment decision.
“Processing NMC and LFP together has been the unsolved problem in battery recycling," he says.
"Conventional approaches require separate lines for each chemistry, duplicating capital and operating costs and limiting flexibility as the market evolves.
"Renewable Metals has solved for that. Their single-line process handles both chemistries together, which is technically non-trivial and commercially significant as LFP's share of the market continues to grow.
"Combined with a low-capital modular plant design, the company’s platform is genuinely deployable at scale.”
The planned Hunter Valley commercial plant would position Renewable Metals closer to east coast battery waste streams and potential downstream customers in the minerals processing sector.
Renewable Metals' total funding base includes grants from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and UK government programs alongside its private capital raises.
The company's partnership with EMR, announced during its 2024 seed round, saw EMR managing director for technology and innovation Roger Morton describe the technology as "truly scalable" and suited to deployment across EMR's global network of recycling facilities.
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