Battery Recycling | CATL Plans to Establish a Battery Recycling Factory in Europe

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Battery Recycling | CATL Plans to Establish a Battery Recycling Factory in Europe

Date：2024-11-25

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Keyword tags： Battery Recycling EU CATL

Recently, media including Bloomberg have reported that Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. (CATL) is in discussions to establish a battery recycling business in Europe and has already discussed potential recycling factory locations with European governments, including Hungary.

CATL's new battery plant under construction in Debrecen, Hungary, is set to begin production in the second half of 2025, supplying companies such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz. This factory is the largest greenfield investment project in Hungary, with initial annual production capacity planned at 40 GWh, expanding to 100 GWh per year in the future. The first phase will employ between 2,000 and 3,000 workers. CATL's other battery factory in Europe is located in Germany, which opened in 2022 and employs approximately 1,700 workers.

According to Jason Chen, the head of CATL's European operations, CATL hopes to alleviate "environmental concerns regarding the production and disposal of batteries" by establishing a battery recycling infrastructure in Europe to process its own used batteries, especially production waste. "Now that we've been here, we'd hope to have a closed loop from manufacturing to recycling right here," said Chen.

In addition to CATL's subsidiary Brunp Recycling, CATL may also consider cooperating with potential European partners for battery recycling. However, CATL did not mention any specific European companies.

CATL's customer Mercedes-Benz recently opened a pilot plant for battery recycling using hydrometallurgical processes in Kuppenheim, Baden. Currently, there is no confirmation of whether CATL will cooperate with Mercedes-Benz on battery recycling in Europe. However, in China, Mercedes has cooperated with CATL's battery recycling subsidiary Brunp Recycling. Additionally, Volvo has partnered with CATL for battery recycling in China: on April 16th of this year, Volvo Cars and CATL signed a memorandum of understanding on battery recycling. Volvo Cars will recycle retired and waste batteries and hand them over to certified downstream suppliers for recycling to extract metals such as nickel, cobalt, and lithium. CATL then uses these recycled materials to produce new batteries for use in the production of new Volvo cars.

In fact, as early as last year, CATL revealed its potential plan to establish a battery recycling factory in Europe. CATL's Chief Manufacturing Officer Ni Jun stated at the 2023 Summer Davos Forum that CATL was negotiating with European partners to discuss the establishment of multiple electric vehicle battery recycling stations in Europe and is also seeking partners to establish EV battery recycling stations in North America.

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