Tozero opens battery recycling demo plant in Upper Bavaria

Last year, Tozero signed a lease for an existing building in the Chemiepark Gendorf facility. The startup has now completed refurbishment work at the site and announced the inauguration of its first demonstration plant. Located just a few kilometres from the German-Austrian border, the facility marks a significant milestone for the company.

“In under four years, Tozero has scaled from lab to industry as the first European company,” the responsible parties stated in a press release sent to us via email.

According to Tozero, the plant can process 500 tonnes of battery waste annually and recycle over 100 tonnes of high-purity lithium carbonate in the process. Additionally, graphite and a mixture of nickel and cobalt compounds will be recovered on-site at an industrial scale.

The Gendorf plant will also serve as a blueprint for a full-scale commercial facility, for which the company plans a capacity of 45,000 tonnes of battery waste per year. Tozero aims to realise such a site by 2030.

Tozero was founded in 2022 and has developed a process to efficiently recover high-purity lithium and graphite from end-of-life batteries. Specifically, it aims to recover over 80% of the lithium from used batteries, which already meets the EU’s 2031 targets.

Tozero specialises in processing the so-called black mass, which contains valuable battery active materials, and does not handle the mechanical processing of entire end-of-life batteries. Dismantling and preparation of the batteries are outsourced to ‘specialised partners.’ This approach minimises safety risks, reduces logistics costs, and increases the flexibility and scalability of its recycling process.

Tozero has already delivered its first batches of recycled material to European customers in 2024. However, this lithium was still produced on a small scale from the pilot plants in Munich. With the demonstration plant in Gendorf, output is set to increase to the aforementioned volume.

As of mid-2025, the company employed around 30 staff members from ten nations at its Munich site, according to its own figures. It is not known how many of these work in Gendorf—but a ‘mid-single-digit million euro’ investment has been made in the industrial park.

Meanwhile, the company is expanding its network and now collaborates with partners in ten European countries, according to its own statements. The recycled lithium carbonate, graphite, and nickel-cobalt mixtures are currently sold to companies in the construction, ceramics, and lubricants sectors. Tozero states that additional raw materials and industries will follow.

“Europe doesn’t yet have the critical raw materials it needs to build and scale its own energy transition and battery industry,” said Sarah Fleischer, co-founder and CEO of Tozero. “Our technology, now scaled 25,000 times, changes this by enabling us to recycle end-of-life batteries and extract these materials at industrial scale for the first time. […] We’re consistently proving that recycling isn’t just a pilot project – it can be delivered at a level capable of giving Europe a homegrown, circular supply of critical materials its future runs on.”

Source: Information via email