Batter recycling will become a huge market in the future
Yesterday’s bid read in the FT was about battery recycling and why the industry needs a revolution, and today the Wall Street Journal is also writing an article about battery recycling. As EV adoption will happen at a blistering pace and ore grades will deteriorate in the future, recycling of old batteries will be key to keep prices low on batteries and also a necessity for the environment as batteries are quite toxic.
The future growth prospects of battery recycling are so good that one of the biggest players in the global recycling industry, Umicore, has built its entire 2030 strategy, called RISE, around its Battery Recycling Solutions business group. Around 75% of its capital expenditures in the period 2022-2026 are going to be dedicated to battery materials, battery recycling, and fuel cells with battery recycling being the most significant growth business. Umicore already announced a significant scale-up of its battery recycling activities in Europe with a 150,000 ton battery recycling plant which will become the largest in the world.
The biggest pure play on battery recycling is the US publicly listed company Li-Cycle, but here the investor is betting on lithium-ion batteries being the long-term winning battery technology, or at minimum that Li-Cycle can change its recycling business if another technology wins out. In any case, the idea with today’s equity note is provide some inspiration to growing ecosystem around electric vehicles.