LG Energy Solution to set up Battery Recycling Plant in China

LG Energy Solution and Huayou Cobalt of China will set up a battery waste recycling joint venture in China. The companies signed a business agreement with its partner on July 26. It said the details of the agreement, including the investment amount and the completion date for the plant, remain to be finalized.

Huayou Cobalt is the largest cobalt producer in China. It partnered with LG Chem to establish a precursor joint venture in Quzhou, China and a cathode material joint venture in Wuxi, China in 2019, and a cathode material joint venture in Gumi, Korea in 2022.

Under the agreement, the two companies will extract lithium, nickel and cobalt from the scrap generated during the battery production process and collected spent batteries. These raw materials will be converted into cathode materials and supplied to LG Energy Solution’s battery plant in Nanjing, China.

The two companies plan to set up a pre-treatment plant to process scrap and battery waste in Nanjing. They will build a post-processing plant, which processes recycled raw materials, in Quzhou, Zhejiang Province, where they can utilize Huayou Cobalt’s infrastructure.

Investments in battery recycling are also on the uptick. LG Energy Solution, together with LG Chem, invested 60 billion won in Li-Cycle, a Canadian battery recycling company, in December last year to secure a 2.6 percent stake in it. In 2019, Samsung SDI made an equity investment in PM Grow, a company specializing in battery reuse. SK On has technology to recover lithium hydroxide from battery waste.