WA-based battery recycling company Renewable Metals has raised $12 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round to accelerate the commercial rollout of its lithium-ion battery recycling technology, according to a media release from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC).
The round was led by the CEFC, through Virescent Ventures, with participation from Neglected Climate Opportunities, Climate Tech Partners, European Metal Recycling (EMR) and existing investor Investible.
The company said the raise brings its total funding to more than $38 million since inception, including support from Australian and UK government-backed sources.
Renewable Metals has developed what it describes as an alkali-based hydrometallurgical process designed to recover lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese from end-of-life batteries.
The company said the system can process multiple lithium-ion battery chemistries, including NMC, LCO and LFP, without pre-sorting or dismantling, and achieves more than 95% recovery rates across key materials.
The funding will be used to support continuous operations at its Kewdale, Western Australia, demonstration plant, accelerate engineering work for a planned commercial facility in the Hunter region of New South Wales, and expand technical and commercial teams.
The company said the Kewdale plant is expected to operate at an initial capacity of 960 tonnes per annum, scaling to 2,000 tonnes.
Renewable Metals chairman Peter Beaven said the company was aiming to compete in global battery recycling markets currently dominated by China. “Renewable Metals is building a platform that can compete with leading Chinese recyclers at scale, while enabling recovery of critical minerals in Western cost environments and beyond,” he said.
Chief executive Luan Atkinson said the approach was designed to change the economics of battery recycling. “By delivering high recovery at low cost without large, centralised facilities, we can build plants sized for near term feedstock, and scale with the market over time,” he said.
Virescent Ventures partner Blair Pritchard said the company had addressed a key technical challenge in the sector. “Conventional approaches require separate lines for each chemistry, duplicating capital and operating costs,” he said. “Renewable Metals has solved for that with a single-line process that handles both chemistries together.”
The CEFC said it has supported Renewable Metals and its battery recycling development since 2023 as part of efforts to strengthen Australia’s circular economy and domestic critical minerals recovery capacity.
