Independent advisory on EV battery end-of-life: value recovery, reverse logistics and producer responsibility, across the UK and EU.
Start the conversationFree tool · UK & EU
Before a retired traction battery leaves your yard, you need to know whether it’s routine, restricted or dangerous — because that answer decides how it’s packed, how it moves, and what it’s worth.
Answer six questions about the pack in front of you. You’ll get an indicative condition rating, the handling and packaging implications that follow from it, and signposting to the relevant UN entries and packing instructions.
It’s a stripped-down demonstration of the assessment method we run for clients — enough to show the principle, and enough to be useful.
Try the assessment →Regulatory signposting follows ADR and the UN packing instructions as applied in the UK and EU; other jurisdictions use a different framework. Runs entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is transmitted or stored. Indicative guidance only; not a substitute for competent assessment, and not an ADR classification.
Who we work with
The obligation to collect and treat retired traction batteries is already law. The volumes — and the costs — are still ahead. Ionworth works with every party that will carry a piece of it.
Manufacturer take-back is real, but "free" isn’t neutral. A pack with residual health is an asset — we help you tell a valuable pack from a spent one before it leaves your site, reliably and at scale.
If you first place batteries on the UK market, the obligation is already on your books — classification, collection, treatment. We help you scope, model and control a cost that bites hardest in the 2030s.
Collection, not recycling, may be the defining expense: UN-approved packaging, hazardous-goods carriage, cross-border movement. We help design compliant routing that doesn’t destroy the economics.
Producer responsibility only works while the producer exists. Drawing on operating experience under the EU framework UK reform is modelled on, we contribute practitioner evidence to policy design and consultation.
What we do
Rapid, safe classification of retired packs by hazard state and residual health — a repeatable process, not a one-off judgement call.
See how it works →Repair, remanufacture, repurpose or recycle: every pack routed to the outcome that recovers the most value, with handling realities priced in.
Built on today’s UK and EU rules and maintained as they reform through 2026 and beyond — so recovering value never puts compliance at risk.
Why Ionworth
“I’ve sat on the manufacturer’s side of that table, in the UK and across Europe. I know what this obligation looks like from the inside — and what it will cost when the volumes arrive.”
— Neil Milton, Founder & Principal
30 years
Ford Motor Company, motor industry management
UK + EU
Battery end-of-life responsibility across multiple markets
2026+
Operated under the EU framework UK reforms are modelled on
Research
Our white paper sets out the case in full: the £200-per-pack collection floor, the uncounted mild-hybrid population, the reverse-logistics problem, and the orphaned-liability question the next round of regulation must confront.
Neil Milton · Ionworth · 2026
Contact
Whether packs are moving through your operation today or the liability is maturing on your balance sheet, the conversation costs nothing.