Renewable Metals has closed a $12 million Series A funding round to accelerate the commercial deployment of its next-generation lithium-ion battery recycling technology.
The round was oversubscribed and upsized from an initial $8 million target, bringing total funding secured to over $38 million since inception. This includes support from Australian and UK governments. The raise was led by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), managed by Virescent Ventures, and supported by existing investors the Neglected Climate Opportunities, European Metal Recycling (EMR), and Investible alongside new investor Climate Tech Partners.
Global lithium-ion battery recycling capacity remains heavily concentrated in China, with much of the world’s battery waste exported for processing. Renewable Metals is developing a locally deployable solution to recover critical minerals within domestic or regional supply chains, reducing reliance on exporting battery waste and offshore refining.
The company has developed a differentiated alkali-based hydrometallurgical process that recovers lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and manganese from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries. The process achieves >95% recovery, including up to 30% more lithium than conventional acid-based methods, at lower cost and with reduced environmental impact.
Designed as a true “all-battery” solution, the company can process all chemistries (NMC, LCO, LFP) and feed forms, from production scrap and black mass to cells and full packs, at the same time. Materials can be processed as received, without pre-sorting or dismantling, enabled by a rapid discharge step. The process eliminates the need for intermediate black mass production, while recycling reagents and wastewater and avoiding problematic waste streams such as sodium sulphate. This is particularly relevant in jurisdictions such as the US and Europe, where sodium sulphate disposal presents a significant cost and regulatory burden.
The company’s flowsheet, combined with modular construction principles, enables commercial plants to be built at a fraction of the scale of conventional recycling facilities, supporting deployment in Western cost environments while remaining globally competitive. The platform is designed for deployment across global markets, particularly in regions with high disposal costs and limited local refining capacity.
The Series A funding will support three core priorities. First, it will enable continuous 24/7 operation of the company’s commercial prototype plant in Kewdale, Western Australia, which is expected to commence full operations from mid-2026 through to early 2028. The plant will operate continuously at an initial design capacity of 960 tpa, ramping to 2,000 tpa and generate sustained, near-commercial performance data to validate the technology and inform the design of Renewable Metals’ first commercial-scale plant, planned for the Hunter, New South Wales.
Second, the funding will accelerate the company’s Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) study for its first commercial facility in the Hunter, New South Wales, establishing a blueprint for repeatable, globally deployable plants, while demonstrating a low-capital, modular approach, with early scoping suggesting a markedly lower capital and operating cost profile than conventional recycling facilities.
Third, Renewable Metals will expand its team across R&D, engineering and commercial functions to further strengthen its technology platform, improve product quality, broaden feedstock flexibility, and execute its global growth strategy.
Peter Beaven, Chairman of Renewable Metals, said: “Today, battery recycling is dominated by China, with Western markets reliant on exporting materials offshore for processing. 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.”
Luan Atkinson, CEO of Renewable Metals, said: “Our process changes the economics of battery recycling. 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, said: “Processing NMC and LFP together has been the unsolved problem in battery recycling. 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.”
This funding marks a pivotal step towards commercial deployment, as Renewable Metals advances a scalable, globally deployable platform for battery materials recovery.
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