Battery Recycling

The mining group Eramet and the environmental services group Suez have determined the location for a recycling plant for electric car batteries in France. This recycling plant will be built in two phases in Dunkirk in the so-called “Battery Valley” of France. In the first phase, a dismantling facility is planned, which is expected to be operational in 2025 and have a processing capacity of 50,000 tons of battery modules per year. In the second planning phase, to be completed by 2027, a hydrometallurgical plant will be built to extract and refine the metals (nickel, cobalt, lithium) contained in the black mass. A pilot plant will soon be commissioned on the site of the Eramet research center, where the refining process will be continuously tested and validated on a pre-industrial scale. For this pioneering project, the mining group has received a grant of 80 million euros from the European Union and the BPI to partially finance pre-industrial studies, plant construction and operating costs for the first 10 years of operation. Source: https://www.eramet.com/en/group/eramet-and-suez-choose-dunkirk-for-their-electric-vehicle-battery-recycling-plant/

Less than two years after announcing expansion plans for Europe, U.S.-based battery recycling specialist Redwood Materials has announced the acquisition of Redux Recycling and thus added Germany as a location.

The Korean companies SungEel and Samsung C&T are planning to build a battery recycling plant in Germany. First, the joint venture (JV) intends to invest around 45 million euros.

Another battery recycling plant is to be built in Alsózsolca, Hungary, specifically for collecting and recycling lithium-ion production waste from locally based cell manufacturers.

The Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt and European Metal Recycling (EMR) from England have opened a recycling plant for the disassembly of traction batteries in Hamburg, Germany.

Primobius has been awarded a contract to build a shredder plant for lithium-ion battery processing at Mercedes-Benz in Kuppenheim with a processing capacity of ten tons per day.

The North American company Li-Cycle has commissioned its first European recycling plant for lithium-ion batteries in Magdeburg. The plant is to have an annual capacity of up to 10,000 tons of battery material. The start of production of a second line with the same capacity is still planned for 2023, he said. Processing without unloading and disassembly According to Li-Cycle, the plant is the largest in the company’s current portfolio and one of the largest of its kind in Europe. The group uses technology that allows it to directly use all types of lithium-ion battery waste, including complete electric vehicle battery packs, without the need for unloading, disassembly or thermal processing, it said. Annual capacity of 81,000 tons planned Germany represents the largest market for battery production waste, so Li-Cycle expects a significant amount of waste lithium-ion batteries there for all of Europe. According to the company’s own information, it is aiming for an annual recycling capacity of 81,000 tons. Source: https://investors.li-cycle.com/news/news-details/2023/Li-Cycle-Starts-Operations-at-its-First-European-Lithium-Ion-Battery-Recycling-Facility-One-of-the-Largest-on-the-Continent/default.aspx