Groupe Renault, Veolia and Solvay are partnering to enable the circular economy of EV battery metals in Europe through closed-loop recycling. The existing Veolia and Solvay consortium, created in September 2020 (earlier post), is thus reinforced with Groupe Renault’s position and experience in circular economy and in the life cycle of EV batteries.

The highly complementary partnership will benefit from Solvay’s expertise in the chemical extraction of battery metals and Veolia’s 10 years of experience in lithium-ion battery dismantling and recycling via a hydrometallurgical process.

The three partners seek to establish a secure and sustainable supply source for strategic battery metals, such as cobalt, nickel and lithium. The companies plan to achieve this goal by leveraging their respective expertise at each step of the value chain—from collection of end-of-life electric vehicle batteries to dismantling, metal extraction and purification—and by enhancing existing mechanical and hydrometallurgical battery recycling processes.

Through Solvay and Veolia’s joint technology, strategic metals that were previously recovered in a form only suitable for metallurgical applications will be extracted and purified into high-purity metals ready to be reused in new batteries, thereby reducing the environmental footprint of future EV batteries through this closed loop.

The three partners are already actively engaged in an experimental phase, which involves setting up a pre-industrial demo plant in France with the capability to extract and purify end-of-life EV battery metals.