German startup Cylib starts building Europe’s largest EV battery recycling plant

German startup Cylib has broken ground on its first industrial-scale battery recycling plant, just months after it raised €55mn in the largest-ever funding round for a European battery recycling company. 

The state-of-the-art facility, located at Chempark on the outskirts of Düsseldorf, will spread across three football pitches. Once operational — scheduled for 2026 — the plant is slated to recycle 30,000 tons of EV batteries a year. 

For context, the average EV battery weighs about 500kg so Cylib’s plant will be able to process around 60,000 EV batteries per annum. This is far more than Europe’s current largest such facility, Hydrovolt in Norway — a joint venture between Northvolt and Norwegian renewable energy firm Hydro — which has a capacity of 12,000 tons per year.

Founded in 2022, Cylib has developed an end-to-end battery recycling process that recovers all the critical raw materials from EV and micromobility batteries. This includes key elements like lithium, cobalt, nickel, aluminum, and manganese, as well as scrap metal and black mass. 

Batteries entering Cylib’s new plant will be discharged, dismantled, and then put through three treatments — mechanical, thermal, and water-based — to separate all the key materials from one another. This differs from competitors, most of which only extract a few key elements from old batteries. By processing all of them, Cylib can also sell all of them.   

The company’s founders — Dr Lilian Schwich, Paul Sabarny, and Dr Gideon Schwich — launched Cylib after a decade of battery recycling research at RWTH Aachen. The partners claim their method uses 30% less energy than competitors. 

Securing the supply chain for EV batteries

Cylib’s pitch has clearly been strong enough to reel in some big investors, including the likes of Porsche, Bosch Ventures, and World Fund. In May, the company raised a €55mn Series A funding round that it will use to build out its new factory and grow its team of 70 employees.   

In total, Cybil and its backers are investing more than €180mn into the facility, according to CNBC. 

As Porsche’s investment hints, Cylib is targeting EV-makers as its key customer base. The company’s plant could provide automotive manufacturers in Europe with a local source of key metals needed to produce new batteries, negating the need to mine new materials.    

“Cylib reaching industrial-scale production will be a key driver in building a robust European battery infrastructure,” said Schwich, the company’s CEO. 

As Europe electrifies, battery recycling is becoming an increasingly key priority for policymakers. In May, the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) entered force. The bill aims to secure a sustainable supply of critical raw materials that isn’t reliant on foreign powers.

The CRMA includes provisions that grant battery recycling companies easier access to financing, an expedited permitting process, and matchmaking with off-takers. The European Commission is expected to award funding to the first projects  by the end of 2024.