A closed-loop pilot for recycling EV batteries has been completed by Cirba Solutions and General Motors. In it, materials recovered from end-of-life GM packs were made into new cells whose cathode material contains 100% recycled nickel, cobalt and manganese. The recycler will take part in The Battery Show North America in Detroit, United States, from 12 to 15 October.
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Cirba Solutions, a US-based battery recycling company, has completed a closed-loop EV battery recycling pilot with General Motors (GM) and other partners. The outcome was made known on 9 October 2026, in an announcement that the company would take part in The Battery Show North America, which is being held in Detroit, United States, from 12 to 15 October.
In a closed loop, the materials of a used battery are returned to the making of a new one, and the pilot followed that course from end to end. Battery packs that had reached the end of their life in GM electric vehicles were taken as the starting point, and the materials recovered from them were used to produce new battery cells. According to Cirba Solutions, these are the first GM EV batteries to have been made with cathode active material (CAM) that contains 100% recycled nickel, cobalt and manganese. Those cells have since been put to use. In September, the first GM EVs to be powered by them rolled off the assembly line. Cirba Solutions has presented the partnership as a demonstration of the closed-loop supply chains that it is working to establish.
The importance that the company attaches to such supply chains was explained by Kody Krady, its Director of Battery Material Sales and Business. He said that the battery industry "continues to evolve rapidly, both domestically and globally", and that battery recycling "plays a vital role in strengthening the value chain by increasing the supply of recovered critical minerals and creating new opportunities to meet growing demand for these essential materials".
The same reasoning has taken the company to Detroit. Krady said that events like The Battery Show "are essential to bringing together industry leaders, exchanging insights on emerging technologies and market trends and identifying opportunities for collaboration". Representatives of Cirba Solutions will accordingly be on site, where they will meet partners and industry leaders.
The batteries on which this work depends are drawn from many quarters. Cirba Solutions works with a variety of partners to collect end-of-life and scrap batteries from automotive OEMs, energy storage systems, gigafactories, retailers, data centers, manufacturing plants and municipalities.
Cirba Solutions is a battery recycling company in North America that has 35 years of experience. It extracts critical materials from scrap and end-of-life batteries, and it then supplies those materials back into the supply chain.