Orano Battery Recycling Pilots (Bessines-sur-Gartempe)

Orano's EV battery recycling program, listed as 'Hydrometallurgy' (promoter ORANO Batteries), annex entry (17) of the EU CRMA first Strategic Projects list — an ongoing recycling project in France covering lithium (battery grade), cobalt, nickel (battery grade), manganese (battery grade) and graphite. The record is pinned to the operating industrial pilots at Orano's CIME site in Bessines-sur-Gartempe (Haute-Vienne): a pre-processing pilot commissioned at the start of November 2023 producing 'active material' powder (black mass) from battery modules and gigafactory scrap, and a hydrometallurgy pilot purifying it into high-purity nickel, cobalt, manganese and lithium salts, together sized to recycle the equivalent of two to three electric vehicles a day. Orano's March 2025 release states the intent to create a closed loop at Dunkirk for customers alongside the NEOMAT CAM/PCAM projects, but no committed commercial-plant instrument was located, so the Dunkirk plant is recorded as stated intent only. Graphite output rests on the CRMA annex alone — Orano's own releases name the metal salts but not graphite. Modeling compromises: black-mass input is recorded as blended-anode-material (end-of-life anode material being recovered; the actual feed is whole-battery active-material powder) and the graphite output form is unstated in sources, recorded conservatively as concentrate-form recovered graphite via natural-graphite-concentrate.

Facts on this page last re-verified Aug 12, 2026 — the oldest verification date among its current claims. How we verify.