UK: Recyclus opens battery recycling factory, hoping to recover 22 tons a year by 2025

British battery recycling firm Recyclus Group has completed commissioning its LiBatt plant in Wolverhampton, England, which can process up to 22,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries. That's equivalent to more than 48,000 batteries for electric vehicles.

In today’s statement, Recyclus forecasted to recover 8,300 tonnes of batteries in year one; scaling up to three shifts by 2025 will bring the plant up to its 22,000-tonne licensed capacity.

The company added that the battery recycling facility is compatible with all lithium-ion battery chemistries and explained that bulk liquid nitrogen tanks have recently been installed to facilitate continuous processing.

Recyclus had a soft launch in July this year but completed the official opening and licensing this week.

Robin Brundle, director and co-founder of Recyclus Group, said: “Having completed the commissioning phase, we are now able to commence commercial operations which represents a significant step towards the realisation of our planned processing rate.”

According to the company, the plant can process all kinds of end-of-life Li-ion batteries and lithium metal to produce black mass from critical metals that can be reprocessed and sold back into the battery supply chain.

Storage is also onsite to keep up to 100 tonnes of lithium-ion batteries (equivalent to around 200 EV batteries). The company named Slicker as its partner for the nationwide collection service of battery waste. As a historical footnote – said storage was the site of a fire that broke out when Recyclus opened the LiBatt facility in July. A single pallet of batteries in one of the site’s seven storage bays had caught fire but was quickly under control.

The LiBatt facility is owned by the Recyclus Group, of which Technology Minerals owns 48.25%.

letsrecycle.com, mrw.co.uk (fire incident in July)