Ganfeng, SVOLT, BMW, Huayu flooded into the battery recycling market

In the face of new trends, many companies have entered the market to increase battery recycling projects. Including GEM, Bangpu Cycle and other companies focusing on battery recycling business, it also includes companies such as BYD and CATL in top 10 power battery companies in the world that have increased battery recycling projects in order to control the cost of raw materials and ensure a stable supply of production capacity, and even companies such as PCcooler and SANY Heavy have entered the bureau for cross-border recycling.

Here are top 10 car battery recycling companies in China that we know so far. According to incomplete statistics, in the first half of this year, 9 companies have been involved in overweight battery recycling projects.

Lithium battery companies continue to increase battery recycling

Faced with the increasingly tight supply of raw materials for lithium batteries, material manufacturers, battery companies and vehicle companies have begun to turn their attention from the upstream industrial chain to building a closed-loop industrial chain. Upstream and downstream enterprises cooperate to increase battery recycling, and jointly create a closed-loop battery industry chain to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

Ganfeng Lithium

On June 29, Ganfeng Lithium Industry and one of top10 lithium iron phosphate power battery manufacturers SVOLT Energy signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement, announcing in-depth cooperation in lithium resources, lithium salt supply and marketing, battery recycling, and industrial park construction to achieve win-win development for both parties.

At present, Ganfeng Lithium has a recycling and processing capacity of 34,000 tons/year for the dismantling of retired lithium batteries and comprehensive metal recovery. In the future, the company will also build a large-scale complex that can recycle 100,000 tons of decommissioned lithium batteries per year.

Tianqi shares

On June 7, Tianqi announced that the company and Haitong Hengxin signed the “Strategic Cooperation Agreement on Lithium Battery Recycling”. In terms of business cooperation in battery recycling and utilization such as power and energy storage, the two parties cooperate in the field of recycling and recycling of waste power batteries and energy storage batteries, and jointly create a closed-loop industrial chain for recycling and recycling of waste batteries.

At present, Tianqi Co., Ltd. has an annual processing capacity of 20,000 tons of waste lithium batteries in the lithium battery recycling sector. The company’s comprehensive utilization and expansion technical transformation project for waste lithium batteries is under construction. After the project is put into production, the overall processing scale of the company’s lithium battery recycling sector will increase from 20,000 tons of waste lithium batteries to 50,000 tons per year.

Huayou Cobalt

On May 25, BMW Group announced that it will join hands with Huayou Cycle in the field of new energy vehicles to create an innovative cooperation model of closed-loop recycling and cascade utilization of power battery materials, realizing the closed-loop recycling of power battery raw materials for electric vehicles in China for the first time.

According to the agreement, BMW and Huayou Cycle will cooperate to dismantle the power battery, and use Huayou Cycle metallurgy technology to extract a high proportion of core raw materials such as nickel, cobalt and lithium in the battery. The decomposed raw materials will be provided to BMW’s battery suppliers for the production of new power batteries to achieve closed-loop management of power battery raw materials.

It is reported that Huayou Recycling is a subsidiary of Huayou Cobalt Industry, focusing on the field of battery recycling. Recently, it was reported that Huayou Cobalt and LG New Energy will establish a battery recycling joint venture in China, and the source of used batteries is LG New Energy’s Nanjing battery plant. The joint venture will utilize Huayou Cobalt’s infrastructure to extract nickel, cobalt and lithium from used batteries and supply them to LG New Energy’s Nanjing plant.

Enterprises across industries enter the recycling market

PCcooler

On June 26, PCcooler announced that the company plans to raise no more than 200 million RMB. All the funds raised will be invested in the first-phase sub-project of the construction of the lithium battery cathode key material production base. The first phase of the project is scheduled to be put into operation in December this year. It is time for the sub-project to form new production capacity including 10,000 tons of ternary precursors, 3,000 tons of lithium carbonate and 5,000 tons of ternary cathode materials.

It is worth noting that the raw materials for the preparation of cathode materials by PCcooler mainly come from the recycling of waste batteries. According to the data, PCcooler’s main business is the research and development, production and sales of LED lighting, new heat dissipation components for electronic products, and cathode materials for lithium batteries. Previously, PCcooler entered the field of battery recycling and cathode materials through the acquisition of Gejiu San Bihe.

SANY Heavy

On May 26, it was reported that SANY Heavy and BTR Technology have reached a strategic cooperation. The two parties will carry out long-term cooperation on battery banking, retired power battery recycling and other businesses to jointly build a power battery recycling network.

As a leading construction machinery enterprise in China, Sany Heavy Industry has stepped into the field of battery recycling through this cooperation. In recent years, as the main products of the construction machinery industry have gradually entered the electrification period, Sany Heavy Work is the industry leader and is naturally at the forefront of development.

As of 2021, Sany Heavy Industry has completed the development of 34 electric products, and the sales of electric engineering vehicle products have exceeded 1,000 units, with sales of nearly 1 billion RMB. Sany Heavy Industry has entered the field of battery recycling. This last link in the full cycle of charging services will further enhance the core competitiveness of the company’s products and accelerate the electric transformation of the company.

Conclusion

At present, there are two major difficulties in front of the battery recycling industry, one is the imperfect industry management standard system; the other is the immature recycling and refining technology.

First of all, in the past few years, the power battery recycling industry was in the early stage of exploration, and the market regulations were not perfect.In recent years, with the gradual expansion of the market volume, which has attracted the attention of relevant departments, the national and local levels have successively issued regulatory policies on battery recycling, and an industry standard system has been initially established.

However, between the introduction and implementation of the specification, there are still many details and problems that need to be solved urgently. Therefore, at present, industry management is still a long way from standardization. Secondly, in the field of power batteries, companies give priority to the primary use of raw materials.However, with the tight supply of lithium ore resources and the arrival of the retirement period of the first batch of power batteries, companies began to think about battery recycling.

As a result, re-research, layout technology, recycling and refining technology are not mature, and the goal of making enterprises to achieve profitability cannot be achieved.But with the gradual improvement of the policy, the market has gradually grown. The battery recycling industry will become another outlet for new energy.