Tozero GmbH (stylized as tozero) is a pioneering German clean technology (GreenTech) and deep-tech recycling enterprise that has developed Europe?s first industrial-scale recovery line dedicated to extracting both lithium and graphite from spent lithium-ion batteries. Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Munich, the company combats Europe?s critical materials paradox?extreme reliance on imported battery minerals despite sitting on an expanding local stockpile of battery waste. By introducing a proprietary, non-acidic hydrometallurgical recycling architecture, tozero bypasses traditional high-emission, high-temperature smelting methods. The firm transforms end-of-life batteries and manufacturing scrap into high-purity, battery-grade raw materials, offering a circular supply chain that reduces mining emissions by approximately 70% while keeping vital commodities within the European automotive and industrial manufacturing sectors.
Company Overview & Regional Infrastructure
Tozero GmbH operates at the intersection of material science, mechanical engineering, and ecological sustainability, functioning as a vital provider of alternative resource infrastructure.
- Corporate Form & Roots: Founded in Munich in mid-2022 by serial entrepreneur and mechanical engineer Sarah Fleischer alongside prominent metallurgy researcher and expert Dr. Ksenija Milicevic Neumann. The underlying core technology is backed by decades of academic R&D stemming from Germany's elite RWTH Aachen University (specifically the Institute for Process Metallurgy and Metal Recycling).
- Operational Base & Scaling: The company maintains its corporate and engineering headquarters in Munich, Germany. In March 2026, the company achieved a massive industrial milestone by commissioning Europe's first operational industrial-scale demonstration plant, located at the Chemical Park Gendorf in Burgkirchen an der Alz, Bavaria.
- Capacity & Scaling Velocity: Within just three years of ideation, the company scaled its baseline technology 20,000 times over. The Bavarian facility boasts an active recycling capacity of 1,500 tonnes of battery waste per year?preventing the equivalent of 6,000 electric vehicle (EV) batteries annually from entering landfills?with strategic roadmaps targeting a 30,000-tonne commercial-scale plant by 2030.
- Venture Backing: The firm is backed by a syndicate of top-tier deep-tech and climate investors, including Verve Ventures, Third Derivative, and prominent European venture groups, allowing it to accelerate capital-intensive scaling ahead of stringent regional directives.
Core Technology: Proprietary Hydrometallurgical Processing
Conventional battery recycling methods rely heavily on pyrometallurgy (shredding and melting batteries down in energy-intensive high-temperature furnaces). This legacy approach produces substantial carbon emissions, causes severe material losses, and completely burns away valuable graphite while failing to effectively isolate lithium from the resulting intermediate material, known as "black mass."
Tozero solves this structural inefficiency through an advanced, green chemical leaching approach. The company's proprietary closed-loop process operates with distinct technical attributes:
1. Feedstock-Agnostic Processing
Unlike rigid recycling protocols calibrated to treat only specific battery cells, tozero's system is chemically agnostic. It accepts and processes all variations of lithium-ion battery chemistries, seamlessly neutralizing and extracting inputs from Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt (NMC), Lithium-Iron-Phosphate (LFP), and old consumer electronic batteries.
2. Acid-Free Chemical Leaching
Traditional hydrometallurgy depends on severe, highly corrosive strong acids to break down metals, creating toxic liquid wastewater streams that require expensive secondary containment. Tozero's eco-friendly chemical framework eliminates strong mineral acids, drastically reducing the hazardous waste profile of the plant while lowering overall processing costs below traditional mining economics.
3. Dual Lithium & Graphite Recovery
The platform targets the black mass with high chemical selectivity. While historical factories struggle to recover the anode and cathode materials cleanly, tozero achieves an exceptional 80% to 97% recovery rate for both lithium and graphite simultaneously at industrial volume, meeting the EU's strict 2031 battery recycling targets years ahead of schedule.
Products and Material Solutions Portfolio
Tozero operates as a high-purity raw material refiner and business-to-business (B2B) circular partner. Rather than marketing retail consumer goods, the enterprise produces standardized, chemical-grade commodities reintegrated directly into international manufacturing lines:
1. High-Purity Battery-Grade Lithium Carbonate ($Li_2CO_3$)
The company's primary refined product line. Extracted directly from secondary waste streams, this chemical compound meets stringent battery-grade purity specifications. It is sold back to battery cell manufacturers and chemical houses to serve as the core input for next-generation electric vehicle batteries, decoupling automotive giants from overseas mining dependencies.
2. Reclaimed Anode-Grade Graphite
Historically treated as an unrecoverable waste product in recycling plants, tozero purifies and isolates the graphite embedded inside battery anodes. This product is supplied directly to:
* Battery manufacturers seeking to build fully circular, closed-loop domestic anodes.
* The industrial lubricants and plastics sectors.
* The global construction and ceramics industries, providing a reliable secondary material stream that lowers corporate Scope 3 emissions.
3. Primary Nickel-Cobalt Mineral Concentrates
A consolidated, nutrient-rich metal matrix containing refined nickel and cobalt components extracted from premium cathode scraps. This material is shipped downstream to chemical precursor facilities to be re-synthesized into fresh cathode active materials (CAM).
4. Turnkey Industrial Recycling & Circularity Services
Tozero acts as an environmental infrastructure partner for major institutional sectors, offering customized waste management and material-repatriation services:
* For eMobility & EV Automotive Firms: Safe decommissioning, logistics handling, and structural disposal of large-scale end-of-life traction battery packs.
* For Battery Gigafactories: Direct recycling services for production scrap and off-specification cell rejects (which typically account for up to 10% of a factory's total output during initialization), allowing factories to instantly recapture their raw material overhead locally.
* For Electronic Waste Recyclers: B2B processing contracts to ingest post-consumer black mass arrays, executing advanced mineral extraction that standard shredding yards cannot complete in-house.
Strategic Impact & Supply Chain Resiliency Matrix
| Operational Vector | Traditional Mining & Import Paradigm | Tozero Closed-Loop Paradigm |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Environmental Footprint | Extremely high; intensive landscape degradation and carbon-heavy transoceanic logistics. | ~70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to raw mining extraction. |
| Supply Chain Geopolitics | >95% reliance on foreign mineral monopolies (e.g., China for graphite, South America for lithium). | 100% localized European supply chain utilizing regional waste as a strategic domestic asset. |
| Material Loop Integrity | Linear (Take-Make-Waste); up to 60% of end-of-life batteries traditionally landfilled. | Full circular recovery tracking, reclaiming up to 97% of critical black mass components. |
| Regulatory Compliance | Vulnerable to shifting EU carbon border tariffs and strict upcoming recycled-content mandates. | Safely clears future EU 2031 battery recycling and material verification laws ahead of schedule. |
