A UK consortium has secured funding through the Battery Innovation Programme to develop ReCAM, a lithium-ion battery recycling project aimed at converting battery waste into cathode active materials for reuse in new batteries.

The project brings together the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre, Watercycle Technologies, Recyclus Group and Polaron to tackle the pressing challenge of a growing volume of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries and leveraging the black mass produced in the disposal and recycling process.

As electric vehicle adoption accelerates, the UK is projected to generate up to 94,000 metric tons of black mass annually by 2040, which contains highly valuable lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese. However, the UK has no viable processing route to deal with black mass, leaving this material to often be exported overseas for processing, which results in lost economic value, increased emissions and reliance on international supply chains.

The ReCAM project introduces a patented, short-loop refining process that converts black mass directly into high-value cathode active material (CAM) for reuse in new batteries. Unlike current technologies, which break materials down into individual metals through a multi-stage chemical process, ReCAM uses a new next-generation approach that converts mass in a single streamlined step.

The process also recovers lithium efficiently and operates as a zero-waste system. Designed as a modular, on-site solution for recyclers, capable of processing 250 kg of material per hour, ReCAM enables more flexible and economically viable battery recycling in the UK.

Dr Ahmed Abdelkarim, co-founder at Watercycle Technologies, said, “By establishing a viable UK-based route for refining battery waste into reusable materials we can unlock significant economic value, reduce emissions associated with exports and enhance the resilience of the UK battery ecosystem.”

Robin Brundle, executive chairman at Recyclus Group, added, “We are delighted with this award and to be working with such gifted partners. This is a British-centric program built around UK resilience and that is something we at Recyclus are extremely proud of.”

Polaron will use its AI-based materials platform to help characterize and optimize the recycled cathode materials, linking process conditions to microstructure and performance. Polaron’s AI-driven cell design technology will dramatically accelerate the transition from materials to electrodes, and electrodes to cells.

Dr Isaac Squires, CEO and co-founder of Polaron, commented, “For recycled battery materials to be used again at scale, they need to prove they can be performant. Our role in ReCAM is to help the consortium understand how process conditions shape cathode microstructure and performance, so promising recycled materials can move closer to battery-grade use as quickly as possible.”

The initiative is funded under the UK’s wider £452m (US$616m) Battery Innovation Programme, which is being delivered by Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) on behalf of the Department for Business and Trade.

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Rock Tech Lithium has partnered with Canada’s BMI Group to develop its lithium converter facility in Red Rock, Ontario. The collaboration is expected to take the form of a general partner/limited partner structure, with Rock Tech controlling the general partner and BMI acting as lead limited partner and anchor investor. Rock Tech will retain full control over project development, engineering, operations and key technical and strategic decisions.

Rock Tech is developing an integrated lithium platform in Canada, connecting upstream supply from the Georgia Lake project with downstream production at the Red Rock Converter. The project aims to create a domestic supply chain from mine to battery-grade lithium salts that aligns with IRA and CUSMA requirements, enhancing Canada’s critical minerals processing capabilities and supporting North American and European supply chains.

As part of the partnership, BMI Group plans to invest C$$200m (US$144m), with Rock Tech and additional partners contributing further equity over time. The project aims to establish processing capacity in Canada, enhancing value creation, supply security and planning certainty for North American industrial off-takers.

“BMI Group’s significant investment is a strong market signal. An experienced Canadian partner committing at this level demonstrates that our project is not only technically and economically compelling – it also enjoys the confidence of professional investors,” said Mirco Wojnarowicz, CEO Rock Tech. “This partnership structure reflects our philosophy: we bring the technology, the operational expertise and the proven converter concept. Our partners invest the capital with expected high returns. Together, we deliver.”

To advance near-term development, including a feasibility study, the partners plan a non-dilutionary funding program of up to C$30m (US$22m) matched by government contributions. The funds will support engineering, environmental and permitting work, and early site development ahead of a final investment decision by the end of 2026.

The Red Rock Converter leverages Rock Tech’s project in Guben, Germany, which is fully engineered and permitted, and designated a strategic project under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act. The Canadian facility will be built on BMI’s 337-acre industrial site, located 100km east of Thunder Bay and 60km south of Rock Tech’s Georgia Lake lithium deposit.

“As long-horizon developers, BMI Group sees its partnership with Rock Tech as one that will position Northwestern Ontario as a key hub in sovereign defence and battery materials supply chains,” said says Paul Veldman, CEO BMI Group.

“Our Red Rock platform provides industrial-ready infrastructure that compresses timelines from site selection to production. This investment reflects our confidence in Rock Tech’s technology, market strategy, leadership and long-term vision. Through our Canadian and European investor base, we are aligned on the need for secure, allied critical minerals processing capacity and the multi-sector coordination to get it done.”

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Electric vehicles (EVs), positioned as a sustainable alternative to internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, continue to face challenges related to material sustainability. Polestar has expanded its battery circularity efforts, announcing that batteries used in the Polestar 2 and Polestar 3 now contain at least 50% recycled cobalt. The milestone is part of a broader strategy to reduce reliance on virgin materials, improve supply chain transparency and extend the lifecycle of key resources.

During the vehicle use phase, the company focuses on extending battery life and preserving value for as long as possible. Polestar has partnered with Volvo Cars battery centers to refurbish high-voltage batteries, enabling Polestar 2 and Polestar 3 vehicles requiring replacements to receive refurbished units with equivalent state of health. This approach supports a circular flow of batteries, helping to maintain performance standards while reducing environmental impact and improving value retention.

Polestar is also establishing recycling partnerships across all its markets to meet producer responsibility requirements while extending battery lifecycles and maximizing material recovery.

Fredrika Klarén, head of sustainability at Polestar, said, “To drive a Polestar is an intentional choice by customers who care about tomorrow. Electrification, powered by renewable energy and enabled by circular battery materials, points to a new kind of system: one where resources stay in use and abundance replaces depletion.”

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The adoption of electric vehicles – BEVs, PHEVs and HEVs – is expected to increase in the mid to long term as the auto industry pursues carbon neutrality. Market demand for improved power efficiency is continuing to grow as a result, with motor generators, which play a critical role in extending driving range and improving the performance of electrified vehicles, increasingly required to operate at higher efficiency.

To meet these market needs, reducing power loss in motor generators is essential. Among various approaches, iron-based amorphous alloys – which can significantly reduce iron loss occurring in motor cores – are considered a promising material to realize high-efficiency motors.

In support of this, Denso has invested in Next Core Technologies (NCT) to co-develop advanced motor cores using amorphous alloy technology. The collaboration will combine NCT’s materials and processing expertise with Denso’s motor generator development capabilities, with the goal of enabling mass production of highly efficient motor cores for next-generation applications.

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The RESiLiTE (Robust, Economical, Silicon-rich, Lightweight and Thermally Efficient Battery Packs) project, co-funded by Horizon Europe, has received cell samples at Kautex in Bonn, Germany. This marks a key step toward developing battery packs for automotive applications, with potential expansion into aviation.

The cell samples are currently undergoing testing at RWTH Aachen, which will generate data that will help fine-tune and optimize the sensing and control features of the battery management system (BMS). Securing these samples is a major step forward, as it forms the foundation for optimizing battery charge/discharge timing (high C-rates), ensuring efficient operation without causing damage or shortening battery lifespan.

The project, which began in July 2025, has made significant progress over the past year. Notably, the technical system-level requirements for the battery packs have been successfully defined. Work has also been ongoing on the vehicle and battery architecture, as well as the design and sizing of the full battery pack. RESiLiTE has also been developing the BMS, safety functionalities and fast-charging capabilities.

In 2026, the project will focus on finalizing the design and architecture of the battery pack.

Stefano Piacquadio, project coordinator at Kautex, said, “The project is on track to achieve all its KPIs by developing a prototype that is ready for  industrialization. Together with our partners, we are advancing the state of the art in battery pack technology, developing industrializable architectures with exceptional packaging efficiency, high C-rate capability and advanced diagnostics to support these innovations.”

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Integrals Power‘s lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP) cathode active materials have proved both durability and performance in long-term cycling and extreme low temperature testing conducted by QinetiQ.

The ongoing test program has achieved more than 1,500 charge and discharge cycles at a 1C rate, with the pouch cell retaining nearly 80% of its original capacity. The 1,000-cycle milestone was passed last year, at which point the retained capacity was more than 80%. Durability is critical for lithium-ion battery packs in applications requiring long service life with minimal degradation, such as electric vehicles.

Sub-zero testing by Cranfield University evaluated the pouch cell’s ability to retain high capacity in extremely low temperatures. The tested cell, from the same batch as those evaluated by QinetiQ, retained 85% of capacity at -25ºC and 68% at -30ºC. In comparison, benchmark LFP and LMFP chemistries typically retain around 50% and 40%, respectively.

In addition to durability and performance, Integrals Power’s LMFP material offers lower cost, improved safety, reduced toxicity, less reliance on critical minerals and a smaller carbon footprint compared with nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) chemistries commonly used in EV batteries. It also provides higher energy density than LFP.

Integrals Power founder and CEO Behnam Hormozi said, “Independent, third-party testing by industry experts is a cornerstone of our business, and these latest results from QinetiQ and the University of Cranfield are invaluable in providing trusted and credible data to our customers around the world.

“The results prove that batteries made from our LMFP material can last longer, and perform better in sub-zero conditions. Overcoming the compromises and limitations imposed by existing cell chemistries is essential if battery power is to realize its full potential across a range of sectors, and we’re showing that it can do exactly that.”

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A new study from the Tokyo University of Science is challenging the assumption that sodium-ion battery cells are inherently slower to charge than lithium-ion counterparts.

Published in Chemical Science, the paper reports that sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) using hard carbon (HC) anodes can be intrinsically faster-charging than lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) when the comparison is made on a like-for-like basis and without the test artifacts that typically influence high-rate measurements.

According to the researchers, conventional rate capability tests performed on composite electrodes can obscure the true kinetics of hard carbon. In particular, electrolyte and ion-transportation limitations within the electrode structure can dominate the measured response at high current, masking the underlying insertion behavior of the active material itself. To isolate the anode’s fundamental performance, the team adopted a diluted electrode approach designed to minimize electrolyte transportation effects and enable a quantitative comparison between sodium insertion (sodiation) and lithium insertion (lithiation).

With transportation constraints reduced, the researchers found sodiation to be intrinsically faster than lithiation in the same hard carbon negative electrode. The analysis also pointed to pore filling as the rate-determining mechanism, with sodium requiring lower energy than lithium to form pseudo-metallic clusters within hard carbon nanopores – an energetic advantage that translates directly into improved high-rate charging potential.

“Our results quantitatively demonstrate that the charging speed of an SIB using an HC anode can attain faster rates than that of an LIB,” said Prof. Shinichi Komaba, who led the research team, which included third-year PhD candidate Yuki Fujii, and Assistant Prof. Zachary Gossage from the university’s department of applied chemistry.

The team say that the result is not simply a lab curiosity, but a design direction. By accelerating the pore-filling kinetics in hard carbon, through materials engineering targeted at the nanopore structure, future SIB anodes could access even higher charge rates without relying on external mitigations.

“A key point of focus for developing improved HC materials for fast-chargeable SIBs is to attain faster kinetics of the pore-filling process so that they can be accessed at high charging rates,” Komaba added.

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UK battery technology specialist Anaphite has raised £1.4m (US$1.86m) in funding via the Innovate UK Investor Partnership Program to expand its DCP technology platform – used to engineer homogenous dry composite powders for dry coating of NMC (nickel manganese cobalt) cathodes – to enable high-throughput, high-yield production of dry-coated LFP (lithium iron phosphate) cathodes and graphite anodes.

The total comprises £700,000 (US$932,363)  in grant funding from Innovate UK’s Investor Partnerships: Clean Energy and Climate Technologies competition, matched by £700,000 in investment from climate-focused venture capital funds Elbow Beach and World Fund.

Manufacturing LFP cathodes is more than twice as energy intensive, per kWh of battery cells produced, than for NMC cathodes featuring a medium-to-high nickel content. Optimizing the material mixing and electrode coating processes, which account for 30%-40% of total cell manufacturing energy and cost, is a clear route to transformational cost and carbon footprint savings for battery cell makers and electric vehicle manufacturers.

With LFP expected to represent morethan 55% of global cathode demand by 2030, there is strong demand for technologies that enable its dry coating. Manufacturing dry-coated LFP cathodes is more challenging than for NMC, and no commercial-scale solutions currently exist. As OEMs face rising consumer demand and regulatory deadlines – such as the 2030 UK and 2035 EU bans on new combustion-engine vehicles – a mass-production solution is urgently needed.

Anaphite CEO Joe Stevenson said, “We’re thrilled to have secured this grant support from Innovate UK and the matching investment from Elbow Beach, World Fund and other Anaphite investors. This enables us to attack one of the toughest technical challenges in dry coating – successfully manufacturing LFP electrodes. Once achieved at scale, it will be enormously valuable to the industry. Anaphite’s DCP technology has been successful with NMC dry coating formulations, and we’re confident it can be applied to LFP, to further boost the cost and carbon emission savings for OEMs.”

Gen IV LFP particles are much smaller (between 0.7-3µm) than typical NMC particles (3-20µm), resulting in higher surface area and making homogeneous mixing and dry-film formation more challenging. Anaphite’s work with nanomaterials and dry-coating processes, including its DCP technology for chemically dispersing difficult-to-mix components such as binders and conductive carbons onto active particles, is aimed at addressing these formulation challenges.

Craig Douglas, partner, World Fund, said, “Anaphite’s technology is broadly applicable across next-generation and established battery technologies alike. This investment will enable the company to significantly expand its commercial capabilities, accelerating the scale-up of its manufacturing processes and driving down manufacturing costs for the global battery industry.”

Key expected outcomes include producing dry-coated LFP cathodes and graphite anodes via roll-to-roll processes suitable for mass production, which will then be assembled into full cells for testing. Achieving high first-cycle efficiency and cycle life would demonstrate the approach’s potential to address current LFP and graphite dry-coating challenges, enable dry coating for a broader range of high-volume electrode materials, and support OEM collaborations focused on reducing battery cost and environmental impact.

Jonathan Pollock, CEO, Elbow Beach, commented, “The future of driving is electric, so scaling up affordable, low-carbon battery manufacturing is essential. Anaphite’s technology has the potential to significantly cut both costs and carbon footprint for battery makers and EV manufacturers, and we’re excited to support them as they lead the way in this critical sector.”

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Agco Power is to unveil what it describes as “a bold vision for the future of agricultural and forestry machinery powertrain solutions” that combines cutting-edge diesel technology with pioneering low-carbon innovations designed to meet the evolving needs of farmers worldwide.

Its vision includes the latest addition to the Core diesel engine family, the 8‑liter, 252kW Core80; the Agco Power CO₂ Calculator concept; cost-effective remanufactured engines that extend machine lifespans while reducing environmental impact; and a 150kWh in‑house-developed Future Battery Concept.

“We believe the future of agricultural energy lies in a smart combination of fuels and technologies. There is no single solution – rather, a wider spectrum of power sources is needed. That’s why we are committed to exploring a wide range of innovations, investing significantly in R&D and our Clean Energy Lab, and promoting collaboration across the industry,” said Juha Tervala, vice president and managing director of Agco Power.

Battery concept

Agco Power’s Future Battery Concept is its latest product development project. It is based on NMC cell chemistry and offers 150kWh of capacity.

The company says it is tracking advances in battery cell technology and evaluating multiple chemistries, including solid‑state batteries. Hydrogen is also being investigated for energy storage. However, according to director of product development Kari Aaltonen, battery technology currently appears promising for agricultural applications due to the significant energy losses in hydrogen production and in the conversion of energy to electricity via fuel cells.

“Today, the best way for a farmer to achieve emission‑free operation is with a battery‑electric driveline,” said Aaltonen. “Most regular farm work can, in the future, be completed with a tractor equipped with this battery. The challenge will be very long working days, but high‑power DC charging will enable operators to resume work in around 40 minutes.”

Aaltonen estimates that powertrains based on the concept battery could reach production in 5-7 years. The Future Battery Concept is due to make its premiere next month.

Powering the Fendt 800 Vario Gen5

The latest member of Agco’s modern Core diesel engine family, the 8‑liter Core80, powers the Fendt 800 Vario Gen5, and delivers even more torque (1680Nm) and power (252kW) than other members in the Core family.

“The combination of power and low fuel consumption makes it possible for farmers to work economically while protecting the environment,” said Roland Schmidt, vice president, Fendt Marketing.

CO2 Calculator concept with Valtra

In collaboration with Valtra, Agco Power has developed the CO₂ Calculator concept – a solution that detects the type of fuel used and calculates the operational carbon footprint of agricultural machinery. It combines an engine-mounted fuel sensor with a cloud-based software solution that calculates accurate CO₂ emissions in real time. The visualized and stored data enables farmers to present verified figures to customers and supply chain partners.

“Reliable data on the operational carbon footprint is a major competitive advantage for farmers. It enables more informed decisions and allows them to track, visualize and verify their environmental impact,” commented Jarno Ratia, director of product management of Agco Power.

Agco’s technology solutions will be on display at Agritechnica 2025 in Hanover, Germany, in November.

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Sumitomo Metal Mining and Toyota Motor Corporation have entered into a joint development agreement for the mass production of cathode materials for all-solid-state batteries to be installed in battery-electric vehicles (BEVs). The two companies will advance development through this collaboration.

All-solid-state batteries, which are primarily composed of a cathode, anode and solid electrolyte, are a next-generation battery technology that offers the potential for smaller size, higher output and longer life compared with current liquid-based batteries that use electrolyte solutions. When used in BEVs, all-solid-state batteries are expected to deliver enhanced performance, such as longer driving range, shorter charging times and higher output. Toyota is aiming for a market launch of BEVs with all-solid-state batteries in 2027-28.

Since 2021, the two companies have been conducting joint research on cathode materials for all-solid-state batteries, focusing on challenges such as cathode material degradation during repeated charging and discharging cycles. By leveraging Sumitomo Metal Mining‘s proprietary powder synthesis technology, the two companies have developed a highly durable cathode material suitable for all-solid-state batteries. Drawing on over 20 years of experience in supplying cathode materials for a wide range of electric vehicles, Sumitomo Metal Mining aims to supply the cathode material and move toward mass production.

Both companies will continue to develop various areas such as improving the performance, quality and safety of cathode materials for all-solid-state batteries, as well as reducing costs for mass production. They aim to achieve the world’s first practical use of all-solid-state batteries in BEVs, potentially changing the future of automobiles and helping to realize a carbon-neutral society.

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