Melbourne-headquartered Livium has raised $4.5 million (USD 2.93 million) through a share placement with the funding to be immediately deployed to support growth initiatives, including consolidation of its Victorian battery recycling facilities into a centralised site and the expansion of its large-format lithium battery collections across Australia.
The new capital will also be used to fast-track Livium’s push into new recycling streams, including advanced recycling of solar panels, rare earth elements, and black mass processing.
Simon Linge, chief executive officer and managing director of Livium, whose businesses include Envirostream and VSPC, said the diversification aims to capture additional value across the clean energy supply chain.
“We have built Australia’s market-leading lithium-ion battery recycling operations and are now poised to scale further to meet growing market demand,” he said.
“The proceeds from this placement will accelerate our refined strategy, focused on recycling clean energy waste. The planned consolidation of operations into a single hub will increase capacity and efficiency in battery recycling while providing space to expand into new verticals including rare earth element recycling, photovoltaic recycling, and black mass processing.”
The capital raise comes after Livium recently signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with South Korean solar recycling company Won Kwang S&T to jointly address Australia’s growing solar panel waste through advanced recycling technologies.
The agreement will leverage Livium’s established infrastructure to process end-of-life solar panels. Australia is projected to generate more than 90,000 tonnes of solar panel waste annually by 2035, yet only 10% of decommissioned panels are currently recycled.
Under the plan, Livium will initially export panels to South Korea for recycling at Won Kwang S&T’s existing facility, before progressing to partial dismantling in Australia with the long-term goal of building a joint venture recycling facility here.
“This partnership allows us to demonstrate the viability of solar panel recycling while positioning Livium to lead in Australia’s emerging PV waste sector,” Linge said.
Livium has also struck an agreement with Iondrive to support the continued development of the Adelaide-headquartered company’s deep eutectic solvent (DES) recycling technology.
Livium will supply Iondrive with solar panels, lithium-ion battery black mass, rare earth element magnets, and other samples to evaluate recovery pathways and commercial scalability of the technology.
Iondrive said the DES already demonstrates over 95% recovery rates in testing and offers a closed-loop, and non-toxic alternative to traditional hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical recycling methods.
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