At the moment, the profitability of second life and recycling is low due to missing process automation and afterlife network, intransparency over batteries’ conditions, insufficient planning, and complex decisions that need to be made.

The Circunomics platform is combating these issues with data transparency based on digital Circular Twins with battery passports, analytics to predict the battery’s state of health and find the ideal afterlife use case, and a marketplace for efficient and secure planning with foresight. With this, automotive manufacturers can scale and simplify their battery lifecycle planning and logistics and optimize the batteries’ value. For energy storage system providers this results in, for example, safe sourcing of second life batteries, lower acquisition cost compared to new batteries, and forecast on supply availability.

Circular battery platform for a truly green e-mobility & renewable energy

Due to the increase in electric vehicles we are soon facing an issue: In 2025, 400 million used batteries will be available for second life and recycling. As a consequence, the challenge is to manage the lifecycle of industrial batteries, including second life and recycling, to comply to EU regulations effectively.

The Circunomics platform fulfills the urgent need for transparency in the battery value chain and delivers the currently missing trading network. In this way, the reuse of EV batteries in energy storages can be realized effectively with foresight - resulting in a longer battery usage of up to 15 additional years and up to 50% lower emissions. By making reuse and recycling automated, secure, and profitable, Circunomics is contributing to the prevention of enormous battery waste. Its IoT marketplace for the reuse and recycling of Li-Ion batteries allows for the management of the lifecycle of millions of batteries based on data. It predicts when batteries become available for reuse or recycling, assessing their circular value and finding the right buyers and recyclers.

The energy transition is powered by batteries. But the sustainability of batteries is not given as long as we don’t acknowledge the importance of reuse, recycling, and circularity. A circular battery economy needs to become the standard. Transparency and cooperation are fundamental for this and can only be achieved through a digital platform solution.

Patrick Peter, CEO of Circunomics

Gaining traction

The start-up has successfully completed  pre-seed and seed round and reached a higher investment amount than originally planned. Moreover, they gained strategically important partners like TES Sustainable lifecycle solutions, one of the global recycling and lifecycle leaders.

Managing batteries over their whole lifecycle with foresight by using data and artificial intelligence is core for controlling the impact of batteries and making the industry circular. Circunomics capabilities are therefore the foundation for a circular transformation of the battery economy.

Thomas Holberg, VP Battery Operations at TES

In terms of network expansion, they have made several alliances like the membership in Batteries European Partnership Association (BEPA), Gaia-X, Catena-X and DIN Fachbeirat Circular Economy. In addition, they signed a MOU with a large automotive producer and launched their Marketplace in November 2021. The team has scaled up by 11 people in 2021.

EIT RawMaterials provided financial support through Booster funding at the beginning of Circunomics journey in 2019. Additionally, through several matchmaking events we helped them to build a network and gain more recognition.

Since then, Circunomics have been awarded many prizes such as the KfW Gründen Award 2021 as federal state and nation winner, The Spark 2021 -  German Digital Award as 3rd place winner and the Circular Economy 2030 Competition by SAP & Google as top 5 finalist. The success proves the potential of a solution through a circular platform with digital twins and the clear industry need for it.

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