Most of the world's car batteries will one day end up at a plant owned by Umicore. The Belgian materials technology company, headquartered in Brussels, is one of the largest recyclers of precious metals and a leading producer of cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries — the expensive heart of every EV battery pack.
Umicore's business splits into three pillars: catalysis (automotive catalysts that scrub exhaust emissions), rechargeable battery materials (cathode active materials supplied to battery makers in Asia, Europe, and North America), and recycling (recovering gold, platinum, palladium, and cobalt from electronics scrap, spent catalysts, and battery packs). Its Hoboken plant in Belgium is one of the world's most advanced precious-metal refineries, processing dozens of types of industrial by-products.
With origins reaching back to 1804 and a modern corporate form created in 1989, Umicore employs about 11,000 people. For battery and electronics supply chains, it represents the increasingly mandatory answer to one question: what happens to the materials at end of life?
