ION applies for €3.1 million government grant with EU consortium partners
Our critical minerals recycling Investment Iondrive (ASX: ION) just put out an update on its push into the EU battery recycling industry.
ION has now submitted a joint application for a €3.1 million EU government grant as part of a consortium made up of:
“automotive OEMs, battery manufacturers, material processors, and recyclers”
IF successful it would mean ION receive ~€650,000 of the €3.1 million EU government grant.
IF the grant comes in, the bigger takeaway for us will be that the consortium is formalised and ION can start to name drop the type of organisations it is partnering with…
ION said in today’s announcement that this is “expected within the next three months”.
Which coincides with when ION is planning to have made a “Final Investment Decision” on its pilot plant.
Assuming the government grant application is accepted, ION could be in a position by early 2026 where it has a pilot plant up and running and is capable of taking samples from OEM’s looking to test ION’s tech.
We think a decision on the Pilot Plant (together with a EU government funding announcement) could trigger a re-rate in ION’s valuation.
Typically when recycling tech goes out of the lab and into pilot plant scale - the companies developing the tech start to get re-rated by teh market.
Back in May 2024 private company Cylib raised a €55M series A round to develop an industrial scale plant and in November 2024 Descyle alsoraised €12M in a series A to develop its demonstration plant (November 2024).
We have also seen ASX listed MTM re-rate to a market cap of ~$250M (up ~22X inside the last 12 months) as it expects to have its pilot plant commissioned in Q4 of this year:
We are hoping the same thing happens to ION over the next 6-9 months.
MTM is currently capped at ~$250M whereas our Investment ION is capped at ~$29M
Check out our side by side comparison of MTM and ION here: How does ION compare to MTM?
EU Critical Raw Materials Act mandates recycling
Back in May 2024, the EU introduced the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, which legislated that at least 15% of critical raw materials consumption inside the EU needs to come from recycled sources.
That target was for the year 2030 (5 years away).
(Source)
At the moment the % of critical raw materials recycled is under 9%, which means the EU will need more recycling capacity.
We think ION’s tech will have a role to play because it is a chemical process that uses non-toxic, typically biodegradable Deep Eutectic Solvent (DES).
Conventional recycling technologies are much more energy and acid intensive.
This means ION’s tech has the potential to be cheaper and more environmentally friendly.
What’s next for ION
We are tracking three main things for ION:
- Battery recycling FID - ION expects to be making a Final Investment Decision (FID) on its pilot plant in July. IF everything goes to plan, ION’s plan is to have the plant in production by the end of the year/early 2026.
- E-waste testwork to commence - Initial tests to start in the coming weeks for recovering copper, gold, silver, osmium and rare earth elements from Printed Circuit Boards. Results from those initial tests expected in Q3 2025.
- Mineral processing results - ION is starting with nickel processing. Tests are currently underway on feedstock out of the USA. We could see results from the testing any day now.
