We have imposed a battery-powered mobility model without worrying too much about the pre- and post-sales supply chain

There is no doubt that it is nice to hear that the international community is moving to foster the reduction of polluting particles and CO2, produced by endothermic engines every year.

Who wouldn't like the reduction in smog, noise and the improvement of collective health, severely attacked by the pollution caused by cars , trucks, couriers produce constantly?

Yes, everything is nice, but moving a sector like mobility, so functional and strategic, from internal combustion engines to battery-powered ones, it must not just be a nice cosmetic operation, but would also involve the solution of some fundamental problems, linked to the supply of raw materials to produce the batteries and the recycling of exhausted ones, also to obtain materials from them recycled to be reused in production.

The European Community has set very ambitious objectives regarding the recycling of critical raw materials found inside batteries, such as lithium, graphite , nickel and cobalt. This value has been established as the 15% of recycled material that must be used to produce a new battery.

However, today, battery recycling in Europe is at a standstill, as the Most of the exhausted ones are shipped to China and South Korea, creating a double dependence on these countries.

In fact, we are for virgin raw materials and, by not recycling those that are inside spent batteries, we cannot have strategic compounds already paid at source.

It is therefore easy to understand that in the coming years the market pressure towards new batteries will increase the demand exponentially and, Consequently, their price could rise disproportionately, also because the raw materials that compose them are subject to strategic control by some nations such as China.

The European Community is moving to impose a recycling rate of battery components equal to 73% by 2030 but, the timescales are tight and the critical issues to be face many.

Inside batteries there are some materials that are more critical than others, let's see why:

- Lithium is a fundamental component and affects the current cost of the battery by approximately 30-40%, with continuously growing demand, the need for lithium could triple by 2030. On the other hand, the European recycling rate remains extremely low to date. The largest European recyclers are the Germans, such as Accurec, Duesenfeld, Redux, the French like Snam, the Eramet, and the Finns like the Akkuser, but the maximum efficiency on lithium recycling is achieved in China with around 90% of the incoming recyclable raw material.

- Graphite, which makes up around 50% of the material in a battery, is expected to increase in price by around 14 times by 2050, also because the European Union currently does not have a structured market for its recycling . Furthermore, the graphite that is used for the production of batteries currently comes mainly from China, so the creation of a European recycling market would allow for greater independence on supplies.