Cadmium

The Byproduct Metal: Cadmium Has No Standalone Mine or Economics of Its Own

Cadmium is chemically a close cousin of zinc: both sit in the same group of the periodic table, and cadmium routinely substitutes for zinc atoms inside the crystal lattice of sphalerite, the dominant zinc ore mineral. Per the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, cadmium chapter, “cadmium is generally recovered from zinc ores and concentrates” and “sphalerite, the most economically significant zinc ore mineral, commonly contains minor amounts of cadmium” which “often substitutes for zinc in the sphalerite crystal lattice.” USGS gives an average cadmium content of typical zinc ores of roughly 0.03%, and notes that no quantitative cadmium reserve estimate exists independent of zinc reserves.

At the smelter level, cadmium is either recovered as a saleable byproduct or discarded into the waste stream, a choice each operator makes based on local economics and environmental rules rather than on cadmium's own price. USGS notes that “at zinc smelters, cadmium is either recovered or treated as part of a waste stream,” and describes the sole identified U.S. producer — a Tennessee zinc smelter processing both domestic and imported zinc concentrates — as generating an estimated 200 tons of cadmium metal in 2025 purely as a byproduct (USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter). Canada's Teck Resources describes the same relationship directly: “cadmium is produced as a co-product of Teck's zinc smelting and refining process,” yielding 99.999%-purity metal in stick and billet form supplied mainly to the nickel-cadmium battery industry (Teck Resources, Other Metals).

This byproduct structure means cadmium output tracks zinc smelter throughput, not cadmium demand or price. World refined zinc production reached an estimated 13,000,000 tonnes in 2025, led by China at roughly 4,100,000 tonnes, versus world refined cadmium output of only around 23,000 tonnes the same year — a ratio of more than 500 to 1 (USGS MCS 2026, zinc chapter; USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter). A smelter cannot ramp cadmium output in response to a price spike; it can only recover more of what is already present in concentrate it is processing for entirely different reasons.

Why it matters: because cadmium supply is fundamentally a function of zinc-industry capacity decisions, cadmium markets cannot respond to demand growth — from CdTe solar or elsewhere — the way a primary-mined metal would. Any structural increase in cadmium demand runs into a hard ceiling set by global zinc smelting output and by how much of the cadmium already present in zinc concentrate individual smelters choose to recover rather than treat as waste.

Refined Production Leaders: China Alone Accounts for Roughly 40% of World Output

Source: USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter, World Refinery Production table.

Korea's output is dominated by Korea Zinc, whose Onsan smelter complex is one of the world's largest integrated zinc refineries and a major byproduct producer of cadmium, lead, and other minor metals alongside zinc, with financial disclosures filed through South Korea's DART electronic filing system (Korea Zinc, Annual Report via DART, 2025). Canada's entire national output flows from Teck Resources' zinc smelting and refining operations, which produce 99.999%-purity cadmium in stick and billet form supplied primarily to the nickel-cadmium battery industry (Teck Resources, Other Metals).

The United States, by contrast, produces only a small fraction of world output — an estimated 200 tons in 2025 from a single Tennessee zinc smelter — and net import reliance has stayed under 25% of apparent consumption in most recent years, with import sources over 2021–2024 led by China (50%) and Germany (33%), followed by Australia (6%) and Peru (6%) (USGS MCS 2026).

Why it matters: unlike many critical minerals, cadmium's supply concentration is not the product of a single dominant producing nation weaponizing exports — it is dispersed across more than fifteen countries because it mirrors the geography of the world zinc-smelting industry itself. China's roughly 41% share reflects China's position as the world's largest refined zinc producer, not a deliberate cadmium-specific strategy, and no single country or company controls enough of world supply to unilaterally disrupt the market.

CdTe Solar: First Solar's US Manufacturing Buildout Is Reshaping One Cadmium End-Use

USGS's 2026 commodity summary flags cadmium's growing role in semiconductors explicitly: “in recent years, cadmium has increasingly been used in semiconductors such as cadmium-telluride (CdTe) thin-film solar panels, cadmium-zinc-telluride (CdZnTe) substrates for radiation detectors and imaging applications, and cadmium selenide (CdSe) optoelectronic applications,” and separately confirms that “the leading domestic CdTe solar panel manufacturer began production in mid-2025 at a fifth facility, which was expected to increase domestic manufacturing capacity to about 14 gigawatts per year once fully ramped up in 2026” (USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter). That fifth facility is First Solar's Louisiana plant, a $1.1 billion, 3.5 GW vertically integrated site that began commissioning in 2025, adding to existing Series 7 lines in Ohio and Alabama (Solar Power World, Mar 2026).

First Solar has continued expanding beyond that fifth facility: in late 2025 the company announced a further $330 million investment in a sixth U.S. plant in Gaffney, South Carolina, expected to begin operations in the second half of 2026 and add 3.7 GW of nameplate capacity, pushing total U.S. annual capacity to about 17.7 GW (PVTIME, 2 Dec 2025; Semiconductor Today, 24 Nov 2025). By the end of 2025, U.S. operations accounted for more than 70% of First Solar's global module output, up from about 30% at the start of 2020, with production increasingly concentrated on the Series 7 platform (Solar Power World, Mar 2026).

Despite the capacity headlines, CdTe's actual share of world cadmium consumption remains small. Peer-reviewed life-cycle literature citing 2017 refined cadmium production of about 23,000 metric tons found that roughly 85% went to NiCd batteries versus only about 0.06% to photovoltaic production (Connecticut Siting Council docket, TCLP white paper). First Solar's own sustainability review similarly states that “use of Cd in CdTe PV represents a minor (~1%) fraction of the global demand for primary cadmium,” with cadmium content per watt of module extremely small (under 0.1 g/Wp) and sandwiched between glass sheets rather than present as free metal (First Solar, India EHS Peer Review).

Under the U.S. Department of Energy's three-year Cadmium Telluride Accelerator Consortium, government-funded research into improving CdTe cell efficiency continued through 2025–2026, reflecting federal interest in the technology as a domestic-manufacturing alternative to imported crystalline-silicon panels (USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter).

Why it matters: CdTe is the fastest-growing cadmium end-use and the one most tied to U.S. industrial policy (IRA domestic-content incentives, DOE research funding), but it remains a minority consumer of world cadmium supply. CdTe's real significance for the cadmium market is less about tonnage and more about narrative: it is displacing NiCd batteries as the application most associated with cadmium's future, even though NiCd historically consumed the large majority of refined metal.

NiCd Batteries: From Cadmium's Largest Market to a Shrinking Industrial Niche

Nickel-cadmium chemistry was historically cadmium's dominant end-use, and USGS's cadmium chapter states that cadmium metal and compounds “are mainly consumed for nickel cadmium (NiCd) batteries, but also for alloys, coatings, and pigments” (USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter). Consumer-grade NiCd cells — once standard in cordless tools, camcorders, and household electronics — have been steadily displaced by lithium-ion chemistries offering higher energy density and no cadmium-disposal liability, a shift USGS explicitly documents as ongoing.

The industrial and aviation NiCd segment has proven far more durable. Saft, one of the leading global manufacturers of aviation nickel-cadmium batteries, continues to supply NiCd battery systems and maintenance services for commercial and military aircraft, citing the chemistry's reliability in extreme temperature and vibration environments where lithium-ion alternatives have faced certification and thermal-runaway concerns (Saft, Aviation market sector). Saft's own safety documentation for aircraft NiCd cells lists cadmium and nickel compounds as carcinogenic components, underscoring that even where NiCd remains dominant, the toxicity profile is fully disclosed to operators (Saft, Safety Data Sheet, Nickel-Cadmium Aircraft Cells and Batteries). Industrial NiCd batteries from manufacturers such as EnerSys's Hawker line remain marketed for backup and standby power where deep-cycle reliability and long service life outweigh lithium's energy-density advantage (EnerSys, Hawker Safety Plus Nickel Cadmium Aviation Batteries).

Recycling has become the primary route back into the cadmium supply chain for spent batteries. USGS states that “secondary cadmium is mainly recovered from spent consumer and industrial NiCd batteries” and that one Ohio-based company recovers cadmium metal from recycling both consumer and industrial NiCd batteries, alongside other feedstocks such as copper-cadmium alloy scrap and electric-arc-furnace dust (USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter).

On substitution, USGS is explicit that “batteries with other chemistries, particularly lithium-ion, can replace NiCd batteries in many applications,” while separately noting that cadmium plating can often be replaced by zinc-nickel coatings except where surface characteristics are critical, such as aircraft fasteners — a caveat that mirrors the aviation industry's continued reliance on cadmium-based technologies in this specific niche (USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter).

Why it matters: the NiCd battery market's bifurcation — consumer collapse alongside industrial/aviation persistence — means cadmium demand from batteries is shrinking in aggregate but will not disappear on any near-term horizon. Aviation certification cycles and backup-power reliability requirements are slow to change, giving NiCd, and therefore a baseline level of cadmium demand, more staying power than the consumer-electronics obituary for the chemistry might suggest.

Regulation: A Group 1 Human Carcinogen Restricted Under RoHS, REACH, and CERCLA

IARC's Monograph Volume 100C (“Arsenic, Metals, Fibres, and Dusts”), which updated the agency's earlier Volume 58 evaluation, states that cadmium and cadmium compounds “have been evaluated repeatedly by the IARC Monographs programme” and “since Volume 58 are classified as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1), on the basis of sufficient evidence both in experimental animals and in humans,” specifying that “cadmium and cadmium compounds cause cancer of the lung” (IARC Monographs Advisory Group Report, priorities 2020–2024). The original Volume 58 evaluation concluded that “there is sufficient evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of cadmium and cadmium compounds” and “cadmium and cadmium compounds are carcinogenic to humans (Group 1)” (IARC Monograph Volume 58, Cadmium and Cadmium Compounds). The full Volume 100C monograph, covering arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, nickel, and other agents, is published by IARC (IARC Monographs, Volume 100C, Arsenic, Metals, Fibres, and Dusts).

In the European Union, cadmium is restricted under two overlapping regimes. The RoHS Directive 2011/65/EU caps cadmium at 0.01% by weight in any homogeneous material within electrical and electronic equipment — a tighter limit than the 0.1% ceiling set for lead, mercury, and hexavalent chromium under the same directive, reflecting cadmium's comparatively higher toxicity classification (RoHS 2011/65/EU restricted-substance thresholds). Separately, REACH Annex XVII, entry 23, restricts cadmium and its compounds across a wide range of plastics (PVC, PUR, LDPE, PP, PBT, PET, and others) to 0.01% by weight, prohibits cadmium plating on metallic articles used in food production, agriculture, and several other sectors, and bans cadmium above 0.01% by weight in jewellery components including bracelets, necklaces, rings, and cufflinks (REACH Annex XVII, entry 23, cadmium and its compounds). The European Commission's own regulatory record notes that “cadmium and cadmium oxide are classified as carcinogen category 1B and aquatic acute and chronic toxicity category 1,” the legal basis cited for extending the PVC cadmium ban to all PVC articles (Commission Regulation (EU) No 494/2011, amending REACH Annex XVII for cadmium).

In the United States, cadmium-contaminated sites are addressed under the Superfund program (CERCLA). EPA guidance for metal-contaminated Superfund soils treats cadmium alongside arsenic, chromium, mercury, and lead as one of the five priority metals requiring specialized remediation technologies, noting that cadmium in soil “is amenable to stabilization/solidification, although pH must be maintained in the alkaline range to ensure that leaching does not occur” (EPA Engineering Bulletin, Technology Alternatives for the Remediation of Soils Contaminated with As, Cd, Cr, Hg, and Pb). A representative historical case is the Somers Industrial Finishing Superfund site in Connecticut, where EPA removed 114 tons of cadmium-contaminated soil from a former metal-plating wastewater lagoon (EPA news release, Somers Industrial Finishing Superfund site cleanup). EPA's broader Superfund groundwater program addresses contamination, including heavy metals such as cadmium, at roughly 85% of National Priorities List sites with a selected remedy (US EPA, How Superfund Addresses Groundwater Contamination). Spent NiCd batteries are separately classified as RCRA hazardous waste (category D006 for cadmium) under U.S. federal law (Saft NiCd battery safety data sheet, RCRA D006 classification).

Why it matters: cadmium's Group 1 carcinogen status and its tighter regulatory thresholds relative to lead and mercury under RoHS are the direct cause of the substitution trends described elsewhere in this profile — the shift from NiCd to lithium-ion batteries, from cadmium plating to zinc-nickel coatings, and from cadmium pigments to cerium sulfide. Regulation, not price, has been the dominant force reshaping cadmium demand over the past two decades.

Price Dynamics: No LME Contract, Thin Trading, and a Steady Multi-Year Climb

Cadmium falls into the informal industry category of “minor metals,” defined as “metals which are a by-product of smelting a base metal” that “do not have a real exchange, and are not traded on the London Metal Exchange (LME)” (Minor metals, industry definition). The LME's own published contract list confirms its non-ferrous offering is limited to aluminium, copper, zinc, lead, nickel, tin, aluminium alloys and premiums, plus cobalt and molybdenum futures launched in 2010 for the minor-metals community — cadmium is absent from all LME product listings (London Metal Exchange, Metals listing; Natural Resources Forum, A Guide to the LME).

In the absence of an exchange, USGS relies on Fastmarkets MB's free-market price assessment for 99.95%-purity cadmium in 10-tonne lots, cost-insurance-freight to global ports, as its official reference price (USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter, price source note). Fastmarkets separately publishes and actively maintains dedicated cadmium price codes, including “Cadmium 99.95% min, cif global ports, cents/lb” (code MB-CD-0001) and “Cadmium 99.99% min, cif global ports, cents/lb” (code MB-CD-0002), confirming cadmium remains an actively assessed, if thinly traded, physical minor-metal market (Fastmarkets, Cadmium 99.95% min price assessment; Fastmarkets, Cadmium 99.99% min price assessment).

Source: USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter, Salient Statistics table. USGS defines this as the average free-market price for 99.95%-purity metal in 10-ton lots, cost, insurance, and freight to global ports, sourced from Fastmarkets MB. Notably, U.S. net import reliance swung to net-exporter status (“E”) in 2023 and 2024, reflecting cadmium exports of pigments, preparations, and wrought articles that outweighed the country's modest unwrought-metal import needs in those years (USGS MCS 2026).

Price levels have moved only modestly compared to metals under active export-control pressure such as bismuth or antimony: the U.S. average price rose from $2.56/kg in 2021 to a peak of $4.12/kg in 2024, before easing slightly to an estimated $3.90/kg in 2025 (USGS MCS 2026). This relative stability is consistent with cadmium's byproduct supply structure (Section 1): because output tracks zinc smelting rather than standalone mine economics, and because NiCd battery demand has structurally declined even as CdTe solar demand has grown, the two forces have broadly offset each other rather than producing the kind of acute shortage seen in metals subject to concentrated single-country export licensing.

Why it matters: the absence of an LME contract means cadmium price discovery depends entirely on price-reporting-agency assessments built from a small number of physical transactions, making the market more opaque and potentially more volatile in a genuine supply shock than an exchange-traded metal would be — even though realized price moves over 2021–2025 have been comparatively mild. Buyers of CdTe feedstock or NiCd battery-grade cadmium negotiate largely off Fastmarkets assessments rather than a transparent futures curve.

Vertical Integration: The Nyrstar–Korea Zinc Deal Is Redrawing Byproduct Ownership

Korea Zinc's Onsan complex: the world's largest integrated zinc-cadmium byproduct operation

Korea Zinc's Onsan smelter complex in South Korea is one of the world's largest integrated zinc refineries and a major byproduct producer of cadmium, lead, and other minor metals alongside zinc, with output detail filed through South Korea's DART electronic disclosure system (Korea Zinc, Annual Report via DART, 2025). Korea's national cadmium output of roughly 4,300 tonnes in 2025 — about 19% of world refined production — is effectively a single-company total, since Korea Zinc's Onsan operation dominates the country's zinc-refining base (USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter).

The Clarksville transaction: consolidating US byproduct cadmium under a Korean buyer

On 15 December 2025, Nyrstar announced an agreement to sell its East Tennessee and Middle Tennessee mining complexes and the Clarksville zinc smelter to Korea Zinc, describing Clarksville as "the sole primary zinc smelter in the U.S." and one that "has run for almost 50 years," with the transaction intended to secure "a secure and stable US zinc and zinc by-products supply for the future" (Nyrstar press release, 15 Dec 2025). Trafigura, Nyrstar's parent, will continue marketing Clarksville's zinc metal output through 2026 while the sale completes, with closing expected in the first half of 2026 (Nyrstar press release, 15 Dec 2025). Clarksville is also the source of the entire U.S. domestic cadmium output — an estimated 200 tons in 2025 — making this the transaction that will determine who controls America's only cadmium production line (USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter).

Beyond Clarksville: Korea Zinc's planned US "super smelter" and its cadmium output stream

Separately, Korea Zinc is building a new integrated US smelter, with site preparation beginning in 2026 and phased commercial operations from 2029, designed to process about 1.1 million tonnes of raw materials annually and produce roughly 540,000 tonnes of finished products across 13 product lines including zinc, lead, copper, gold, silver, and strategic minor metals explicitly named as "antimony, indium, bismuth, tellurium, cadmium, palladium, gallium, and germanium," alongside sulfuric acid and semiconductor-grade sulfuric acid (Batteries International, 2 May 2026). This directly embeds cadmium recovery into a new-build U.S. smelter's product slate from the design stage, a departure from cadmium being an incidental afterthought at legacy zinc plants.

Trafigura's Australian byproduct portfolio and government intervention

Trafigura's Nyrstar subsidiary also cut Australian zinc output by around 25% at its Hobart operations in March 2025 amid a raw-materials crunch (Bloomberg, 12 Mar 2025), prompting a strategic review of its Australian smelting assets (Bloomberg, 25 Mar 2025). The Australian government subsequently moved to support Nyrstar's lead and zinc smelters specifically to secure access to critical byproducts including germanium and antimony — with cadmium, copper sulphate, sulphuric acid, and gypsum also cited among the smelter's byproduct output supporting fertiliser and manufacturing supply chains (Mining Journal, 5 Aug 2025; The Mercury, 18 Aug 2025). This is a direct illustration of Section 1's core point: governments now intervene in zinc-smelter economics explicitly to protect the minor-metal byproduct stream, cadmium included, even when the headline commodity (zinc) is what shows up in the smelter's name.

Why it matters: because no company can build a dedicated cadmium mine, control over cadmium supply is really control over zinc-smelter ownership. The Korea Zinc–Nyrstar Clarksville deal and Korea Zinc's new-build US smelter mean a single company will soon influence both the world's largest cadmium producer (Onsan) and the entirety of US domestic cadmium output — a concentration of ownership that a byproduct-only market structure has historically avoided.

Health Standards, Soil Contamination, and the Closed-Loop Recycling Response

Occupational and drinking-water exposure limits

OSHA's cadmium standard sets a permissible exposure limit (PEL) of 5 µg/m³ as an 8-hour time-weighted average, with an action level of 2.5 µg/m³, and explicitly flags cadmium as a carcinogen requiring exposure reduction "to the lowest feasible concentration" (OSHA, Chemical Sampling Information, Cadmium). EPA's National Primary Drinking Water Regulations set a maximum contaminant level of 0.005 mg/L (5 µg/L) for cadmium, citing kidney damage as the health effect of concern and identifying "corrosion of galvanized pipes," "erosion of natural deposits," "discharge from metal refineries," and "runoff from waste batteries and paints" as principal sources (US EPA, National Primary Drinking Water Regulations). By comparison, the World Health Organization's own drinking-water guideline value is set lower, at 0.003 mg/L, and Canada's maximum acceptable concentration is 0.007 mg/L — reflecting some international variation in the specific numeric threshold even though all major regulators treat cadmium as a top-tier drinking-water contaminant of concern (Health Canada, Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality, Cadmium).

WHO/JECFA dietary exposure guidance

Because cadmium accumulates in the body with an exceptionally long biological half-life, the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) withdrew its earlier provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) of 7 µg/kg body weight and replaced it with a provisional tolerable monthly intake (PTMI) of 25 µg/kg body weight, based on the relationship between urinary beta-2-microglobulin excretion (a kidney-damage biomarker) and urinary cadmium excretion in adults aged 50 and older (WHO, Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality, cadmium fact sheet). Expressed on a weekly-equivalent basis this PTMI is roughly comparable to the commonly cited “25 µg/kg bw/week” benchmark used in food-safety risk assessments referenced by industry and regulators globally.

China's soil and rice-belt contamination legacy

China's own scientific literature documents extensive cadmium contamination of paddy soils tied to decades of mining and smelting activity, particularly in Hunan Province. Peer-reviewed sampling of mine-impacted paddy rice systems in Hunan found elevated cadmium, arsenic, and lead partitioning directly attributable to nearby mining and smelting operations (Environmental Science & Technology, Occurrence and Partitioning of Cadmium, Arsenic and Lead in Mine Impacted Paddy Rice: Hunan, China). Follow-on national-scale studies of Chinese paddy soils confirmed cadmium as one of the most widespread heavy-metal contaminants in the country's rice-growing regions, with contamination concentrated in provinces hosting historical non-ferrous metal mining and smelting, including Hunan and neighboring Guangxi (Cadmium (Cd) distribution and contamination in Chinese paddy soils on national scale, PubMed). A dedicated risk assessment of cadmium in rice from Xiangtan, Hunan — a historic lead-zinc-smelting hub — using Bayesian exposure modeling found dietary cadmium intake from locally grown rice posed a measurable health risk to the resident population (Risk assessment of cadmium in rice in Xiangtan, Hunan, China based on Bayesian method, PubMed). A broader review synthesizing China's cadmium-in-agricultural-soils research concluded that historical mining, smelting, and irrigation with contaminated water are the dominant pathways by which cadmium enters the rice supply chain, directly linking upstream zinc/lead byproduct recovery practices to downstream food-safety outcomes (Environmental Pollution, Cadmium contamination in agricultural soils of China and the impact on food safety).

Recycling: NiCd battery recovery and First Solar's closed-loop CdTe program

USGS confirms that "secondary cadmium is mainly recovered from spent consumer and industrial NiCd batteries," identifying at least one Ohio-based recycler that processes both consumer and industrial NiCd batteries alongside copper-cadmium alloy scrap and electric-arc-furnace dust as cadmium-bearing feedstocks (USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter). On the solar side, First Solar operates a dedicated module take-back and recycling program with facilities across Ohio, Alabama, and Louisiana in the US plus Malaysia, Vietnam, Germany, and India, describing its process as providing "closed-loop semiconductor recovery for use in new modules" and stating that its India facility alone "can recover over 90% of materials from processed modules for reuse" (First Solar, Recycling). First Solar states cadmium and tellurium separation and refining from recycled material is conducted by a third-party processor rather than in-house, and that the company pre-funds 100% of estimated collection and recycling costs at the time of module sale so that end-of-life recovery is financed upfront rather than left to future owners (First Solar, Recycling).

Why it matters: cadmium sits at the intersection of two very different regulatory stories — legacy environmental contamination from decades of mining/smelting in producer countries like China, and a forward-looking, financially pre-funded recycling model pioneered by First Solar for CdTe modules. The gap between the two illustrates why life-cycle framing matters: cadmium's environmental liability is concentrated in historical soil contamination, while its newest major end-use (CdTe solar) was designed from the outset with a closed-loop recovery obligation built into the sale price.

EU Battery Regulation 2023/1542: The Final Phase-Out of Cadmium From Portable Batteries

From Directive to Regulation: a harmonized, directly-binding cadmium threshold

Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 entered into force on 17 August 2023 and became applicable from 18 February 2024, progressively replacing the Battery Directive 2006/66/EC, which is fully repealed as of 18 August 2025 (EU Battery Regulation overview, batteryregulation.eu). Unlike a directive, a regulation applies directly and identically across all EU member states without requiring national transposition, which for cadmium means a single harmonized threshold rather than 27 separate national rules (TÜV Rheinland, EU New Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542). The regulation caps cadmium at 0.002% by weight (20 mg/kg) in portable batteries, whether or not incorporated into appliances, light means of transport, or other vehicles (SGS, EU Issues New Regulation on Batteries and Waste Batteries).

The exemption sunset: medical devices, power tools, and emergency lighting lose their carve-out

Under the old Battery Directive 2006/66/EC, medical equipment, portable power tools, and emergency lighting held an explicit exceptional allowance to use NiCd batteries despite the general cadmium restriction. Regulation 2023/1542 revokes the Battery Directive with a two-year transitional period, meaning that from 18 August 2025, NiCd batteries may no longer be used in portable applications at all, including the previously exempted categories (ETAP Lighting, The end of Cadmium batteries in portable applications). This closes the last significant legal channel for cadmium-containing batteries in EU consumer and light-professional equipment, leaving industrial, EV, SLI (starting/lighting/ignition), and light means of transport battery categories — which are subject to different, generally less restrictive cadmium provisions — as the remaining lawful use cases (UNECE, Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 on batteries and waste batteries).

Recycling efficiency targets specific to NiCd chemistry

The regulation sets chemistry-specific recycling efficiency targets by battery weight, requiring 80% recycling efficiency for NiCd batteries by 31 December 2025, alongside 75% for lead-acid, 65% for lithium-based, and 50% for other waste battery chemistries (EU Battery Regulation overview, batteryregulation.eu). This is a materially higher bar than the recovery targets applied to some newer chemistries, reflecting both the long-established industrial infrastructure for NiCd recycling (built up over decades by processors such as Sweden's Saft-linked recycling network and Belgium's Accurec-style operators) and regulators' judgment that a mature, toxic-metal-bearing chemistry should be held to the strictest achievable recovery standard as it phases out of new production.

Why the industrial exemption persists — and what "sunset review" means in practice

Industrial batteries above the regulation's weight and use-case thresholds are not swept into the 18 August 2025 portable-battery ban, preserving cadmium's aviation and industrial-backup niche described in Section 4 of this profile. The regulation nonetheless builds in forward-looking review mechanics: Article provisions direct the European Commission to submit a report to the European Parliament and Council by 2027 assessing whether to extend restrictions to additional substances found to be hazardous to health or that hinder safe recycling and high-quality secondary raw material production (BEPA, Batteries Regulation Brief Overview). Because the regulation explicitly excludes only military, space, and nuclear applications from its scope entirely, any future tightening of the industrial-battery cadmium exemption would need to come through this 2027 review process or a dedicated future delegated act rather than through the current text (Flash Battery, EU Battery Regulation 2023/1542: obligations and updates).

Why it matters: the August 2025 portable-battery cutoff is the culmination of a multi-decade EU policy trajectory against cadmium in batteries, converting what had been a partial, exemption-riddled directive into a near-total prohibition for consumer-facing use. The industrial exemption's survival — covering exactly the aviation and backup-power niche where NiCd remains technically preferred — shows EU regulators drawing a deliberate line between consumer-substitutable and technically-hard-to-substitute cadmium applications, rather than banning the chemistry outright.

Forward Look 2026–2030: Two Diverging Curves — NiCd Decline, CdTe Growth

Demand scenario: CdTe capacity additions through 2026

First Solar's US manufacturing capacity is on track to reach approximately 17.7 gigawatts per year once its sixth domestic facility, a $330 million plant in Gaffney, South Carolina, begins operations in the second half of 2026, adding 3.7 GW of nameplate capacity to the existing fleet anchored by Ohio, Alabama, and the newly ramping Louisiana site (PVTIME, 2 Dec 2025; Semiconductor Today, 24 Nov 2025). Even so, peer-reviewed and company-reported figures place CdTe's own share of world cadmium consumption at roughly 1% or less (First Solar, India EHS Peer Review), meaning that even substantial percentage growth in CdTe manufacturing capacity translates into a comparatively small absolute call on the roughly 23,000-tonne world refined cadmium market.

Demand scenario: NiCd's structural decline continues but does not reach zero

The EU portable-battery ban effective August 2025 (Section 9) removes the last significant consumer-adjacent NiCd demand pool in the bloc, while lithium-ion continues displacing NiCd in general consumer electronics globally, consistent with USGS's description of an ongoing shift (USGS MCS 2026, cadmium chapter). Aviation and industrial-backup NiCd, however, faces no announced phase-out timeline and continues to receive active OEM support from manufacturers such as Saft and EnerSys, meaning a durable baseline of cadmium demand from this segment should persist through 2030 even as its relative share of total cadmium consumption keeps shrinking.

Supply scenario: no capacity expansion path independent of zinc

Because cadmium has no standalone reserve base or mine-development pipeline (Section 1), the 2026–2030 supply outlook is entirely a function of decisions being made in the zinc industry: Korea Zinc's new US smelter reaching commercial operation from 2029 will add a purpose-built cadmium recovery stream (Batteries International, 2 May 2026), while any further zinc-smelter curtailments of the kind Nyrstar made in Australia in 2025 (Bloomberg, 12 Mar 2025) would mechanically reduce cadmium byproduct availability regardless of cadmium-specific demand trends. World refined zinc output of roughly 13 million tonnes in 2025 against a global concentrate supply picture that has periodically tightened (prompting the very Nyrstar curtailments cited above) means cadmium supply growth is capped by a base-metal market it does not control.

Regulatory and geographic shift: pigments and stabilizers migrate toward Asia

With RoHS, REACH Annex XVII, and now the finalized EU Battery Regulation collectively closing off most European end-uses for cadmium metal and compounds, the pigment and stabilizer segments that remain legal in several non-EU jurisdictions are the parts of the demand base most likely to continue shifting toward Asian manufacturing and consumption, mirroring the pattern already seen in cadmium sulfide pigment production and evaluation activity in jurisdictions such as Australia, where regulators concluded current industrial cadmium sulfide pigment use does not pose an unreasonable environmental risk under existing controls (Australian Industrial Chemicals Introduction Scheme, Cadmium sulfide pigments evaluation statement, 22 Dec 2022). This divergence — strict EU-wide bans alongside continued, risk-assessed legal use elsewhere — is likely to persist through 2030 rather than converge toward a single global standard.