The German chemical company BASF has temporarily halted its planned battery recycling project at the Tarragona site in Spain. The company cites delays in expanding battery factories in Europe as the main reason. In its second quarter 2024 financial report, BASF announced that the large-scale metal refinery project at the Tarragona site will be paused. BASF is prepared to resume the project once the development of cell capacities and the adoption of electric vehicles in Europe pick up again.
In July 2023, it became known that BASF was planning a recycling plant for battery materials in Tarragona. At that time, the European Commission had announced funding of 3.6 billion euros for 41 clean-tech projects, including BASF’s new battery recycling facility. The company planned to achieve high lithium recovery rates with the new technology.
Currently, electric vehicle batteries last longer than initially predicted, resulting in a lower volume of end-of-life batteries available for recycling. Existing recycling plants mainly process production scraps from cell factories. Due to delays in expanding some cell factories and companies like Volkswagen’s subsidiary PowerCo building fewer capacities than planned, there is less material available for recycling facilities.
Source: https://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/BASF-legt-Batterierecyclingprojekt-in-Spanien-auf-Eis-article25118239.html
