Altilium secures $5M investment from Marubeni

Altilium, a lithium-ion battery (LIB) recycler headquartered in Plymouth, England, has announced a $5 million strategic investment from Japanese trading and investment group Marubeni Corp. as part of its Series B funding round.

Altilium says the investment marks a significant milestone in its growth strategy and supports its mission to deliver sustainable LIB materials to the United Kingdom through its full battery circularity offering, encompassing zero-carbon electric vehicle (EV) battery collection, black mass recycling and chemical refining to battery metals salts, cathode precursor (pCAM) and cathode active materials (CAM). This will include the construction of an EV battery recycling facility in the U.K., which will be located in Teesside, England.

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Marubeni’s investment will support the next stage of development for the Teesside facility, including detailed engineering studies, land acquisition, planning and permitting and recruitment of the leadership team. Once operational, the plant is expected to have the capacity to process battery scrap from 150,000 EVs per year, producing 30,000 metric tons of low-carbon CAM—enough to meet 20 percent of the U.K.’s CAM requirement by 2030.

Altilium notes its EcoCathode technology can recover more than 95 percent of the battery metals from an end-of-life EV battery, reducing the cost of battery raw materials by up to 20 percent and cutting greenhouse gas emissions by up to 74 percent compared to virgin materials.

“We are proud to welcome Marubeni as a strategic partner at this pivotal stage in Altilium’s growth journey,” Altilium CEO Kamran Mahdavi says. “Their investment strengthens our position as leaders in sustainable battery materials and reinforces our commitment to building the U.K.’s largest EV battery recycling facility. Together, we are advancing our mission to create a U.K. closed-loop supply chain, reduce dependency on imported materials and lowering the environmental footprint of battery production. This partnership marks a major milestone in establishing a truly circular economy for the U.K.’s battery industry.”

Altilium and Marubeni have been working together since the signing of a memorandum of understanding in 2023. Under the agreement, the companies have jointly been developing a closed-loop EV battery recycling business in the U.K. and establishing a supply chain of end-of-life LIBs for recycling at Altilium facilities.

Altilium completed its Series A funding round in 2024 with a $12 million investment from SQM Lithium Ventures, the corporate venture arm of the lithium business of Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (SQM), one of the world’s leading producers of battery-grade lithium.