Nutrient Recycling Market - Global Industry Size, Share, Trends, Opportunity, and Forecast, 2021-2031

The Global Nutrient Recycling Market is projected to expand from USD 4.91 Billion in 2025 to USD 7.33 Billion by 2031, registering a CAGR of 6.91%. This sector focuses on reclaiming essential minerals, primarily nitrogen and phosphorus, from organic waste sources such as wastewater, manure, and agricultural byproducts to produce high-value fertilizers. Growth is largely propelled by strict environmental mandates designed to curb nutrient pollution, alongside a strategic push to decrease dependence on imported synthetic fertilizers through circular economy frameworks. Furthermore, the agricultural shift towards regenerative farming has heightened the demand for recycled nutrient solutions that improve soil health and organic carbon content.

Recent industry statistics underscore rapid infrastructure expansion, especially within the anaerobic digestion landscape. Data from the American Biogas Council indicates that capital investment in United States biogas projects utilizing digesters for nutrient-rich digestate production rose by 40% year-over-year in 2024. Despite this strong trajectory, the market confronts a major obstacle due to inconsistent regulations, specifically concerning the "end-of-waste" classification of recovered materials; this ambiguity complicates compliance efforts and hinders the broad commercial distribution of recycled nutrient goods.

Market Drivers

The enforcement of rigorous environmental standards and nutrient discharge limits is compelling municipal and industrial bodies to modernize wastewater treatment systems, thereby establishing a consistent feedstock for the nutrient recycling sector. Governments worldwide are requiring substantial decreases in nitrogen and phosphorus runoff to avert eutrophication in vulnerable waterways, effectively converting the cost of compliance into an opportunity for resource recovery. This regulatory impetus is directing significant capital towards advanced filtration and extraction technologies, securing a steady supply of recovered nutrients while building a reliable market for waste-derived fertilizers, as evidenced by Ofwat's December 2024 approval of a £6 billion investment package in the UK specifically to upgrade wastewater sites against nutrient pollution.

Additionally, rising economic viability resulting from volatile synthetic fertilizer costs has hastened the shift towards recycled nutrient options. With geopolitical instability and supply chain issues maintaining high prices for mined rock phosphate and fossil-fuel-dependent nitrogen, agricultural producers are increasingly pursuing cost-efficient, locally sourced bio-based alternatives. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the average export price for phosphatic fertilizers hit USD 605 per tonne in the first five months of 2025, marking a 12% rise from the prior year. To bolster this move towards domestic resilience, governments are providing heavy subsidies; for instance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) invested $517 million in December 2024 across 76 projects to broaden independent fertilizer production, including those employing nutrient recovery methods.

Market Challenges

A major obstacle facing the Global Nutrient Recycling Market is the regulatory inconsistency surrounding the "end-of-waste" designation of recovered materials. Because recovered nutrients like digestate often lack a defined legal product status, they are frequently classified as waste by default, which triggers complicated compliance obligations and limits cross-border trade. This classification effectively restricts these materials to local agricultural applications rather than allowing them to enter the broader supply chain as standardized commercial fertilizers, leading to operational uncertainty that deters necessary capital investment in advanced processing infrastructure.

This legislative ambiguity directly impedes market scalability and restricts the broad commercial distribution of recycled products. The limitation on commercial potential is highlighted by recent industry utilization rates, which reveal a significant lack of value-added processing. Data from the European Sustainable Phosphorus Platform in 2024 indicates that only approximately 16% of digestate is converted into fertilizer products, with the vast majority restricted to local utilization. This low conversion rate demonstrates how regulatory barriers are stifling the evolution of nutrient recycling from a specialized activity into a strong, globally traded industry.

Market Trends

The commercialization of struvite precipitation technologies is actively shifting from niche pilot projects to broad industrial implementation, particularly within municipal wastewater treatment plants. This trend is defined by the deployment of fluidized bed reactors that retrieve phosphorus as high-purity magnesium ammonium phosphate, transforming problematic mineral buildups into sellable, slow-release fertilizers. Utilities are adopting these systems to create new revenue sources and guarantee operational stability, advancing beyond mere discharge limit compliance; for example, the German Federal Environment Agency reported in November 2025 that over 50 large-scale phosphorus recovery facilities were operating in Germany, reclaiming more than 20,000 metric tons of elemental phosphorus annually for domestic agriculture.

Concurrently, the development of hybrid organo-mineral fertilizers is rising as a key value-added strategy to close the performance divide between synthetic and organic inputs. Producers are increasingly enhancing nutrient-dense recovered bases, such as digestate or compost, with specific mineral additives to produce standardized, prescription-grade pellets that combine the agronomic accuracy of chemical fertilizers with the soil health advantages of organics. This method directly creates a solution for nutrient variability in waste-derived products, broadening their appeal to conventional farming; illustrating this, Hello Nature invested USD 50 million in December 2024 to launch a new bionutrient facility in Indiana aimed at manufacturing 150,000 tons of these advanced organic biosolutions and fertilizers per year using recovered feedstocks.

Key Players Profiled in the Nutrient Recycling Market

• Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies Inc.
• Nutrient Recovery & Upcycling LLC
• Cambi ASA
• Veolia Group
• BioHiTech Global
• DVO, Inc.
• Smithfield Foods, Inc.
• Elemental Enzymes, Inc.
• Suez Group
• BPC Instruments AB

Report Scope

In this report, the Global Nutrient Recycling Market has been segmented into the following categories:

Nutrient Recycling Market, by Type:

• Gaseous Cycle
• Sedimentary Cycle
• Hydrological Cycle

Nutrient Recycling Market, by Method:

• Bio Composting
• Anaerobic Digestion
• Nutrient Recovery from Wastewater
• Cover Cropping & Mulching
• Aquaponics
• Others

Nutrient Recycling Market, by Application:

• Wastewater Treatment
• Food Waste Management
• Biogas Production
• Forestry Residue
• Biobased Fertilizer
• Others

Nutrient Recycling Market, by Region:

• North America
• Europe
• Asia-Pacific
• South America
• Middle East & Africa

Competitive Landscape

Company Profiles: Detailed analysis of the major companies present in the Global Nutrient Recycling Market.

Available Customization

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• Detailed analysis and profiling of additional market players (up to five).

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