Tatton Consulting supported Plymouth-based EV battery recycling company Altilium in its successful application to the DRIVE35 Scale-Up Fund, awarded £18,500,000 for ACT3: the UK's first commercial refinery for critical battery materials.
About the funded project
End-of-life EV batteries currently leave the UK for Asia, taking the materials, the jobs and the economic value with them. ACT3, under construction in Plymouth, is the UK’s first commercial refinery for recovering critical battery materials from those batteries. It will process 24,000 EV batteries a year using Altilium’s EcoCathode process, producing nickel mixed hydroxide precipitate, lithium sulphate and graphite, with reported carbon emissions up to 74% below mined equivalents, and creating 70 jobs. The site adjoins Altilium’s existing ACT2 pilot plant, the only hydrometallurgical EV battery recycling pilot in the UK. ACT3 also lays the groundwork for ACT4 in Teesside, sized for 150,000 batteries and 30,000 tonnes of cathode active material a year, around 20% of projected UK demand by 2030. The award came through the DRIVE35 Scale-Up Fund, delivered by the Department for Business and Trade with the Advanced Propulsion Centre and Innovate UK, and follows fifteen earlier Innovate UK awards to the same company.
Award details
- Grant to Altilium: £18,500,000
- Funder and programme: DRIVE35 Scale-Up Fund
- Year: 2026
- Project: ACT3: the UK's first commercial refinery for critical battery materials
- Sector: Battery recycling / critical materials
- Independent verification: Altilium company announcement, 9 April 2026, and coverage in TNW, letsrecycle and Transport & Energy
See all the awards Tatton Consulting has supported on our grant successes page.
