Recycling businesses are improving processes to remove metals from old batteries. Their hope is to take advantage of an expected shortage of materials, such as cobalt and lithium, when sales of electric cars start rising. The main problem that companies face now is a shortage of used batteries to recycle. But leaders of the recycling industry are sure that the supply, and profits, will come. Albrecht Melber is co-managing director of the German recycling company Accurec. The value of lithium carbonate and natural and synthetic graphite has doubled or tripled in the last three or four years, becoming the most valuable materials besides cobalt in the automotive battery. There are big values that can be recycled in the future, he told the Reuters news agency.