For the first time, this 100% recycled anode material has been successfully used in battery cell production, proving its viability for commercial applications.
Conventional recycling methods often result in graphite being burned or lost to waste streams due to the use of strong acids, preventing its efficient recovery. By using tozero’s new process, however, more than 80% graphite recovery was reported while preserving its morphological integrity on an industrial scale.
This is being described as significant breakthrough that will enable the material to be refined back to battery-grade quality. The successful cell test showcases comparable performance to a battery cell made from virgin graphite.
These results highlight the potential to integrate recycled graphite into global supply chains, reducing carbon emissions, accelerating the electric transition, and ensuring the true circularity of battery materials.
Commenting Sarah Fleischer, Co-founder and CEO of tozero, said “This is a milestone not just for tozero, but for Europe’s battery industry as a whole. We’ve already seen our recycled lithium successfully re-enter Europe’s supply chain, and now we’re proving the same for graphite. Despite being essential for battery stability, graphite is often overlooked in recycling- largely seen as unrecoverable - yet it is even more critical and geopolitically exposed than lithium.
“With our FOAK plant on track, we’re scaling to recover even more critical materials, helping companies worldwide decarbonise, secure local supply chains, and move towards true circularity - bringing lithium-ion battery waste to zero.”
The rapid expansion in EVs and the growing need for large-scale renewable energy storage has seen as surge in demand for critical materials for batteries including graphite. In the EU alone, graphite demand is expected to rise by 20-25 times from current levels by 2040.
Currently, 98% of Europe’s graphite is imported, with China controlling over 90% of global supply, leaving battery manufacturers vulnerable to trade restrictions and supply chain disruptions.
Looking to 2030, a supply gap of almost 800,000 metric tonnes of graphite worldwide remains to be filled. In addition, graphite alone accounts for over 10%-40% of a battery’s total carbon footprint, with natural graphite mining being environmentally costly, contributing to deforestation, water contamination, and high carbon emissions.
To address these challenges, battery and car manufacturers are increasingly turning to recycled graphite not just for supply chain resilience, but also to comply with new regulations like the EU Battery Directive, European Critical Raw Material Act, and to meet their net zero targets.
As a result, this makes scaling high-quality, battery-grade recycled graphite a key component in reducing dependency on imports, cutting emissions, and securing a stable, circular supply chain for the future of clean energy.
Founded in 2022, tozero’s breakthrough process is seen as helping to solve the key challenges of lithium and graphite recycling, by delivering high efficiency, low energy consumption, and environmentally friendly recovery - without the use of strong acids.
Already operating at industrial scale in its Pilot Plant opened in 2023, tozero recovers lithium and graphite from black mass (cathode and anode mixture after mechanical preprocessing of battery waste), cutting emissions by an estimated 70% compared to conventional mineral mining. With its agnostic feedstock approach, tozero’s high-purity recycled materials are ready for direct use in end-product manufacturing.
By 2027, the company said that it was targeting over 2,000 tonnes of recycled graphite production, with plans to rapidly scale beyond 10,000 tonnes by 2030.
tozero is actively working with a number of battery waste suppliers across many countries to scale a circular, localised supply chain for lithium and graphite.
