Last Update: 13.02.2025

 

Munich, 13 February 2025: tozero – Europe’s leading startup in sustainable lithium-ion battery recycling – has achieved a major breakthrough by producing battery-grade recycled graphite at industrial scale. For the first time, this 100% recycled anode material has been successfully used in battery cell production, proving its viability for commercial applications.

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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. However, tozero’s innovative process achieves more than 80% graphite recovery while preserving its morphological integrity on an industrial scale. This breakthrough enables the material to be refined back to battery-grade quality. The successful cell test showcases comparable performance to a battery cell made out of virgin graphite.

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This milestone highlights 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. This was made possible through dedicated efforts and collaboration, further validating the potential of recycled materials in the battery industry.

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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 decarbonize, secure local supply chains, and move towards true circularity—bringing lithium-ion battery waste to zero.”

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Adham Raslan, Hydrometallurgical Engineer at tozero, said: “By optimizing our recovery methods, we've unlocked the full potential of recycled graphite. We give graphite a second chance—bringing it 'Back to Black.'” 

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Scaling Recycled Graphite for a Secure and Sustainable Battery Supply Chain

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The rapid expansion in EVs and the growing need for large-scale renewable energy storage to combat the climate crisis is driving an unprecedented surge in demand for critical materials for batteries including graphite. In the EU alone, graphite demand is expected to rise by 20-25 times current levels by 2040 in the race to reach net zero, unachievable by current levels.

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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 into 2030, almost 800,000 metric tonnes of graphite supply gap worldwide remains to be filled. In addition, graphite alone accounts for up to 40% of a battery’s total carbon footprint, with natural graphite mining remaining environmentally costly, contributing to deforestation, water contamination, and high carbon emissions. However, this presents a strategic opportunity to shift toward sustainable, locally sourced, and circular solutions.

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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 meet their net zero targets. This makes scaling high-quality, battery-grade recycled graphite essential to reducing dependency on imports, cutting emissions, and securing a stable, circular supply chain for the future of clean energy.

 

​Cracking the code for sustainable, high-efficiency graphite recovery

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Founded in 2022, tozero is closing Europe’s recycled battery supply gap and providing local resources to ensure stable availability for a growing number of industries. Its breakthrough process is solving 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.

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Already operating at industrial scale in its Pilot Plant inaugurated in summer 2023, tozero recovers lithium and graphite from black mass (cathode and anode mixture after mechanical preprocessing of battery waste), cutting emissions of 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 targets over 2,000 tonnes of recycled graphite production, with plans to rapidly scale beyond 10,000 tonnes by 2030.

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tozero is actively working with battery waste suppliers across 10+ countries to scale a circular, localized supply chain for lithium and graphite, further reducing Europe’s reliance on imports and the carbon footprint of battery production.

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About tozero:

tozero is a Munich-based startup co-founded by Sarah Fleischer and Dr. Ksenija Milicevic Neumann. The company's target is to establish Europe's leading lithium-ion battery recycling plant. The company specializes in recovering critical materials like lithium and graphite in a sustainable, high-efficiency process, reintroducing them into the supply chain to enable new battery production and drive a circular economy. 

 

tozero has gained global recognition, winning Hello Tomorrow's 2024 Global Challenge and Hong Kong's EPiC 2024 pitch competition, and has been named one of the Top 100 impact startups worldwide by Norrsken—two years in a row.

 

Last year, tozero successfully completed a pilot project demonstrating a stable 80% lithium recovery rate, already meeting the 2031 EU recovery target, in collaboration with BMW, MAN, and Webasto. The company is actively working with customers in the ceramics and construction industries, expanding the use of recycled battery materials beyond the energy sector.

 

To date, tozero has raised €17 million from investors including NordicNinja, Atlantic Labs, automotive giant Honda, and global infrastructure leader JGC Group, underscoring its potential to scale sustainable battery recycling worldwide.