From Mining to Recycling: Redefining the Battery Lifecycle

As part of EURICE’s portfolio of EU-funded battery and raw materials projects spanning the entire battery lifecycle, the team continues to contribute to Europe’s transition towards a resilient and sustainable battery value chain.

Last month, we participated in the annual workshop of the Cluster Hub “Materials for Batteries”, bringing together leading research and innovation players from the European battery technology landscape. The annual workshop, co-organised by our project RELiEF alongside the EU-funded projects RESPECT, FREE4LIB and LITHOS, took place in Brussels as a satellite event to the Raw Materials Week 2025 at the end of November.

With over 120 participants onsite and online, the workshop once again demonstrated the importance of coordinated European efforts in securing sustainable and competitive access to battery materials. Following a holistic approach, it provided a platform to explore recent scientific advances in sustainable extraction and processing of battery materials and discuss innovative approaches to battery recycling.

“EU-funded projects play a central role in turning research results into effective policies. It is therefore crucial that their impact extends beyond the project lifetime through strong commercial and research partnerships. To secure Europe’s independence in critical raw materials, it is more important than ever that policy frameworks support innovation with robust and reliable compliance measures,” said Sam Hoefman, Research and Impact Manager at EURICE, managing the Cluster Hub projects RELiEF and INERRANT.

Policy and Innovation Highlights

The opening statement by Oliver Schenk (Member of the European Parliament - MEP) underscored the urgency of strengthening Europe’s raw materials policy and fostering closer collaboration among Member States to meet the ambitions of the Clean Industrial Deal. He encouraged the Cluster Hub to contribute concrete recommendations on how to enhance EU frameworks supporting domestic production of battery materials. To this end, the engagement with EU initiatives such as the European Chips Act, the Circular Economy Act, and the building of cross-border strategic alliances would facilitate a stronger collective voice towards the European Commission.

Across the workshop sessions, speakers and project representatives highlighted:

• the growing gap between scientific breakthroughs and industrial adoption of sustainable battery-material extraction and the need for more efficient implementation of new hydrometallurgical technologies,
• recent scientific advances ranging from sustainable mining and remote-sensing methods to bio-based extraction, AI-supported lithium exploration, or improved processes for recovering battery metals from low-grade ores, waste, and other resources,
• the potential of AI and data-driven methods to accelerate upscaling of research results while reducing environmental footprint,
• significant progress in battery recycling, including novel second-life applications and recovering materials from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries.

Roundtable discussions pointed to persistent challenges – from regulatory complexity and global competition to limited scalability – while emphasising the need for stronger industry involvement in helping public authorities identify challenges and shaping effective and future-proof policies.

Advancing a Circular Battery Ecosystem

A key takeaway of the workshop was Europe’s steady progress in closing the battery materials loop, yet also the recognition that regulatory barriers, investment requirements and technological fragmentation still limit widespread implementation. Strengthening cross-sector collaboration will be essential to translate project results into real-world industrial practice.