Project COMET: Developing a Circular UK Battery Supply Chain

A UK consortium is building a demonstration plant that will turn shredded electric car batteries back into the metals needed to make new ones. This matters because the UK currently ships most of its end-of-life EV batteries abroad for recycling, then imports the same critical minerals—lithium, nickel, and cobalt—from overseas suppliers. That dependency creates supply-chain vulnerabilities and undermines the country’s net-zero targets. The project, called COMET, aims to close that loop entirely onshore. Mint Innovation will refine “black mass”—the crushed, processed material from dead batteries—using a low-carbon hydrometallurgical process to extract lithium, nickel, and cobalt. LiBatt Recycling will handle the initial step of turning JLR’s automotive batteries into black mass. WMG will then build new cells from the recycled materials so JLR can test whether they perform as well as virgin metals. If the demonstration succeeds, the UK could secure a domestic supply of battery-grade minerals, reduce the carbon footprint of EV manufacturing, and make the automotive industry less vulnerable to global price shocks and geopolitical disruptions. The project is applied engineering, not fundamental science—its success will be measured in tonnes of recycled metal and miles driven on reused batteries.