A $1 Billion investment by Elemental Group

Elemental Group plans the most significant greenfield Investment in the history of Poland by a private Polish company

Work is beginning on the POLVOLT project, recognized by the European Commission as strategic under the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA). The investment, with a total value of approximately $800 million, is being carried out by Elemental Battery Metals, a special-purpose vehicle of the Elemental Group. As part of the project, a new plant for producing critical metals for the European economy is scheduled to be built by 2030. Its operations will include the refining of so-called battery metals, such as the extraction of lithium, nickel, and cobalt, as well as processing copper recovered from electrodeposits.

Together with the Li-ion battery recycling plant, which has been operational since June 2024, and a facility producing platinum group metals, the Group’s total investment in Poland will amount to approximately $1 billion. This marks the largest greenfield project in the country ever undertaken by a private Polish company.

Elemental Group plans to select a strategic partner for the copper segment of the POLVOLT project at the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026. The Group is currently working on securing financing and starting the investment design phase.

„The POLVOLT project being implemented in Zawiercie is a two-stage initiative, which we estimate will take around seven years. This year, we aim to secure full funding for both phases and carry out a significant portion of the design work. We expect to select a strategic partner for the copper segment by the end of the year. As for battery metals, we are allowing ourselves more time to gain greater clarity on geopolitical matters,” explains Paweł Jarski, founder and CEO of Elemental Group.

„We are currently in the phase of securing full financing – it will follow a project finance structure and will consist of both grants and equity financing,” adds the CEO.

The investment in Zawiercie involves the comprehensive construction of a large-scale metallurgical hub. The first phase of the project concluded in 2024 with the launch of a facility for recovering strategic industrial and precious metals from Li-Ion batteries used in electric vehicles, as well as from automotive and industrial catalysts.

„This part of the facility is already fully operational, although the process of reaching full production capacity will still take some time. We estimate it will take around eighteen months,” summarizes CEO Jarski.