BASF pauses construction of battery recycling plant in Spain
“We have also decided to pause our large-scale metal refinery project for battery recycling at BASF’s Tarragona site in Spain. We are ready to start as soon as the build-up of cell capacities and the spread of electric cars regain momentum in Europe,” BASF announced in its annual report for the second quarter of 2024. BASF CEO Markus Kamieth made similar comments in a conference call.
In July 2023, BASF made the plans public that it was planning a recycling plant for battery materials in Tarragona. This was just after the EU Commission awarded a total of 3.6 billion euros in funding for 41 clean-tech projects, including a battery recycling plant in Spain that had not yet been announced by BASF. At the time, it was stated that the new process technology would “enable very high lithium recovery rates.”
As electric car batteries usually last longer than predicted a few years ago, the proportion of used batteries in recycling is currently still manageable. The existing recycling plants usually mainly process production rejects from the cell factories – as some projects have been delayed and large companies such as the Volkswagen subsidiary PowerCo are planning fewer cell factories in Europe than initially announced, this source of material for recycling plants is smaller than forecast.
For the time being, the recycling project in Tarragona has been paused, but not cancelled. “We are confident that the trend toward electric vehicles will continue and that battery materials remain a significant growth opportunity for the chemical industry,” said Kamieth. “However, recent dynamics have changed, and the market penetration of electric vehicles has slowed down significantly outside of China, as shown by a number of announcements by companies in the e-mobility value chain.”
BASF has a prototype metal refinery in Schwarzheide, Germany. The chemical company wants to develop and optimise processes and procedures there in order to recycle the raw materials from old batteries and production waste – as they could have been used later on a large scale in Tarragona. BASF also produces cathode materials in Schwarzheide; according to Kamieth, the plant is currently in the ramp-up phase. Actually, Schwarzheide is supposed to process primary products from the Finnish plant for battery precursors in Harjavalta. Following another court defeat regarding the licences, BASF put the plans in Finland on hold in April. According to Kamieth, the operating licence for the plant has now been granted. However, a decision on the start will only be made when the decision can no longer be contested. Production in Schwarzheide is not to be affected by this and the future production volumes have been secured through contracts with external suppliers.
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