Sumitomo Metal Mining's Ehime facility is Japan's first EV battery recycling plant

What Sumitomo has switched on

The plant's capacity is equivalent to about 10,000 tonnes of battery cells a year, according to the company [5]. That is roughly 60,000 EVs with 40 kWh packs [5].

It recovers nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper from spent lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles and other applications, Sumitomo Metal Mining told Argus Media [5]. The work is split across two sites in Ehime prefecture: the Toyo smelter in Saijo city and the nickel refinery in Niihama [5]. Full-scale operations are expected to begin in fiscal 2028 [5]. Sumitomo did not disclose the investment figure, recovery volumes or recovery rates for individual metals [5]. The facility gives Japanese automakers a domestic route for four metals Japan imports almost entirely [1].

Nikkei Asia reported on 11 September 2026 that the facility is Japan's first recycling plant for EV batteries [4]. It is designed to stem the outflow of rare metals [4].

Why a smelter, not a startup, built it

Recovered nickel and cobalt will be processed into a high-purity nickel-cobalt mixed solution and supplied to Sumitomo's Isoura plant as feedstock for battery cathode materials [5]. The company is working with Kanto Denka Kogyo to pair its smelting and refining technology with Kanto Denka's high-purity lithium recovery process [5]. The stated aim is a battery-to-battery system, in which recovered metals are reused in new battery materials [5]. Feedstock will come from domestic and overseas markets, including black mass and battery manufacturing scrap [5]. Black mass is a concentrated material. It is made by crushing, neutralising and processing spent batteries [5].

Sumitomo is not the only Japanese company building this capacity. JX Advanced Metals already has facilities that can extract lithium, nickel and cobalt from used EV batteries, Nikkei Asia reported [2].

The policy backdrop

Government and industry set a battery industry strategy in 2022 [5]. It targets 150 GWh a year of manufacturing capacity in Japan and 600 GWh globally by 2030 [5]. Meti estimates that 600 GWh of global capacity would require 380,000 tonnes a year of lithium, 310,000 tonnes of nickel and 60,000 tonnes of cobalt [5]. The same estimate puts graphite demand at 600,000 tonnes a year and manganese at 50,000 tonnes [5]. Japan imports virtually all of its lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth elements, and much of the refining has historically been routed through China [1].

Public-private targets aim for 70% lithium recovery and 95% for nickel and cobalt from storage batteries by fiscal 2030 [1]. A 2026 law covers smaller batteries. It will require manufacturers and importers to collect and recycle small portable batteries from mobile phones, vapes and power tools [1].

The collection problem nobody has solved

Collection is the constraint. Official channels in Japan gather just 14% of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries [1].

Many Japanese EVs are exported at the end of their lives, which sends the metals abroad [1]. Battery chemistries vary widely, from NMC to LFP, and that makes automated sorting difficult [1]. Most retired batteries never reach recyclers, and fire risk complicates the logistics, Glitchwire reported in April [1]. China still handles an estimated 78% of global pre-treatment capacity [1].

Redwood Materials is a US recycler. It processes the equivalent of 250,000 EVs a year and reports recovery rates above 95% for lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper, according to an April report by Glitchwire [1].

The market was projected to grow from roughly $13 billion in 2025 to $70 billion by 2035, Glitchwire reported in April [1]. Compound annual growth was put at between 18% and 30% [1].

What happens next

Full-scale operations at the Ehime plant are scheduled for fiscal 2028 [5]. The plant will take feedstock from both domestic and overseas markets, Sumitomo told Argus Media [5]. The 2026 collection law and the fiscal 2030 recovery targets are the deadlines the plant will be measured against [1]. Sumitomo has not published recovery rates for individual metals [5].