We are pleased to share that CellMine has been awarded grant funding through the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK Demonstrate programme, as part of the UK Government’s £4 billion DRIVE35 programme, delivered by the Department for Business and Trade in partnership with the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK and Innovate UK.

This represents a major inflection point for CellMine, moving from successful lab-scale validation into the next phase of demonstration, validation and commercial readiness.

We’re proud to be delivering this programme alongside leading partners CPI, Minviro, and WMG University of Warwick – combining expertise across scale-up, independent validation, analytics and life cycle assessment.

“We’re incredibly excited to enter this next phase of CellMine’s journey. Support from APC and the Department for Business and Trade enables us to accelerate scale-up, validate our technology at meaningful scale, and continue building within the UK’s world-leading battery innovation ecosystem.”
– Simon Rathbone, CEO, CellMine

We would like to extend a sincere thank you to the APC team and the Department for Business & Trade for their support and confidence in our approach.

 

What This Enables

This programme unlocks CellMine’s multi-kilo demonstration line, a critical step in scaling our technology to industrially relevant conditions.

At this scale, we are able to convert waste black mass directly into high-performance cathode material, enabling:

  • Customer validation – Providing sufficient volumes for OEMs and cathode producers to test, benchmark and qualify our materials
  • Process optimisation at scale – Demonstrating performance, consistency and control under real-world operating conditions
  • Independent verification – Generating robust third-party data to support commercial adoption

Working with CellMine, Minviro will deliver a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of our proprietary process, quantifying carbon savings and environmental impact relative to incumbent routes.

CPI and WMG University of Warwick will provide world-class capabilities in scale-up, materials processing, analytics and electrochemical testing, ensuring that our outputs meet the standards required by industry.

 

Why it Matters

Battery recycling and cathode production in the West face fundamental challenges; from cost and environmental impact, to permitting constraints, and waste generation.

CellMine’s technology is designed to directly address these barriers:

  • Closed-loop chemistry – Our process recycles organic reagents, significantly reducing operating costs while keeping carbon within the system
  • Sulphate-free flowsheet – By eliminating sodium sulphate waste, we remove one of the most significant barriers to scaling recycling and cathode production in Western markets
  • High-quality materials – Enabling production of battery-grade cathode materials with tight control over impurity levels, morphology and performance

Together, these innovations create a pathway to economically viable, low-carbon and domestically scalable battery material production.

 

Looking Ahead

This programme represents a critical step towards commercialisation, bridging the gap between lab validation and industrial deployment.

As we progress, CellMine will continue to generate the data, partnerships and customer validation required to bring this technology to market and support the development of resilient, circular battery supply chains in the UK, Europe and beyond.

We’re incredibly excited about what comes next.

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Grant funding is provided by UK Government.