Altilium secures £18.5m to build UK plant recovering nickel, lithium and graphite
This article covers Altilium, a Plymouth-based greentech startup, which has secured £18.5m in a growth funding round to accelerate construction of what it says will be the UK’s first commercial refinery for recovering critical materials from end-of-life electric vehicle batteries. The funding will be used to build the ACT3 recycling facility to recover nickel, lithium and graphite for UK battery manufacturers and the automotive supply chain, reducing reliance on overseas processing.
Plymouth-based greentech startup Altilium has secured £18.5 million in a growth funding round to accelerate construction of what it says will be the UK’s first commercial refinery for recovering critical materials from end-of-life electric vehicle batteries. The money will be used to build the ACT3 recycling facility in Plymouth, a project pitched as a step toward a domestic supply chain for next-generation battery manufacturing.
Why it matters
The UK imports most refined battery materials today. Recovering nickel, lithium and graphite from spent EV packs could reduce reliance on overseas processing and lower the carbon footprint of battery production. A commercial recycling plant capable of turning automotive waste back into battery precursors would also help vehicle makers and battery manufacturers source locally as demand for EVs grows.
Inside the product
Altilium’s process, called EcoCathode, converts end-of-life EV batteries and manufacturing scrap into battery intermediates and cathode precursors intended for direct reuse in new cells. The planned ACT3 plant is designed to process about 24,000 EV batteries per year and produce materials including nickel mixed hydroxide precipitate, lithium sulphate and graphite.
Construction is expected to start in summer 2026 with commissioning targeted by the end of 2027. Altilium says the facility will create around 70 jobs in Plymouth.
Who are the investors?
The £18.5 million award comes from the UK government’s DRIVE35 Scale-Up Fund, delivered by the Department for Business and Trade in partnership with the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK and Innovate UK. That public backing is intended to support commercial-scale infrastructure projects that secure strategic supply chains for low-carbon automotive technologies.
Separately, Altilium has previously raised over £17 million in private investment, with strategic support from SQM, Marubeni Corporation and Mizuho Bank. SQM is a major lithium producer, Marubeni is a global trading and investment group with exposure to energy and automotive markets, and Mizuho is a large financial institution; their involvement signals interest from industrial and financial partners in domestic recycling capacity. The combined public and private package is positioned to de-risk the build-out of the ACT3 plant and link raw-material recovery to battery makers.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Christian Marston, Chief Operating Officer at Altilium, said:
By scaling our recycling technology and building the UK's first commercial facility of its kind, we are closing the loop on battery materials and enhancing the growth, productivity and competitiveness of the UK automotive supply chain.
Marston’s comment frames the project as both a technical scale-up and an attempt to plug a supply-chain gap for the UK automotive sector. The timeline and capacity targets will be important to watch as the company moves from pilot work to commercial output.
The bigger picture
Industrial-scale battery recycling sits at the intersection of circular-economy policy and industrial strategy. Governments and manufacturers across Europe are increasingly focused on securing upstream materials and reducing exposure to single-source supply chains for lithium, nickel and cobalt. Projects that can demonstrate consistent, high-quality outputs will have the best chance of being integrated into battery manufacturing lines.
This development is part of a broader push in the UK to develop domestic links between recycling, materials processing and battery cell assembly. If Altilium meets its timetable and quality targets, the ACT3 facility could become a practical example of how public funding and strategic industrial partners can co‑finance cleantech infrastructure that supports EV deployment across the UK and Europe.
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