Sensmet has secured fresh backing to scale deployment of its µDOES online metals analysers, in a move that puts real-time process measurement squarely inside Europe’s wider push to strengthen access to critical raw materials.
The Finnish company’s pitch is straightforward: instead of relying on periodic laboratory testing, operators can track metal concentrations continuously within liquid process streams and adjust recovery processes while they are still running. In sectors such as battery recycling, lithium production, wastewater treatment, and fertiliser manufacture, that kind of visibility can materially change yields, impurity control, reagent use, and overall process stability.
Sensmet says its µDOES technology can cover 30 metals in industrial process and environmental waters, while delivering automated 24/7 measurement without expensive carrier gas and chemical reagents. Chief executive Toni Laurila said the system allows operators to extract key metals “much more efficiently” than was previously possible when they had to wait on laboratory analysis. For plants trying to recover lithium, cobalt, nickel, or other strategically important materials, the difference between delayed sampling and continuous process control is not marginal. It can determine whether a circuit is being optimised in real time or corrected after value has already been lost.
That aligns neatly with the priorities of EIT RawMaterials, which has repeatedly argued that Europe needs stronger domestic capability in supply, processing, recycling, and circular recovery of critical materials. The organisation frames raw materials as a strategic strength issue for Europe, not just a mining question, and that is what makes instrumentation businesses like Sensmet relevant. Better measurement does not create raw materials on its own, but it can raise recovery rates, reduce waste, and make hydrometallurgical operations more commercially and technically robust.
If the new funding accelerates adoption beyond pilot and early commercial deployments, Sensmet could find itself in an attractive position. Europe’s raw materials agenda increasingly depends on turning chemistry, process engineering, and monitoring into scalable industrial capability, and continuous metals analysis sits right in that intersection.
