UK’s first EV battery recycling site to open soon

The UK’s first electric vehicle (EV) battery recycling plant has been unveiled, and is expected to begin operations by the end of the year.

Located in Plymouth and operated by technology group Altilium, the 18,000 square foot facility will have the capacity to recycle over 200,000kg of batteries per year, enabling production of high volumes of cathode active materials (CAM), a key component in the manufacturing of EV batteries.

These materials will then be used for the production of new EV batteries in the UK and qualification by car manufacturers, including Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Nissan.

The facility will use Altilium’s proprietary EcoCathode technology to recycle old lithium-ion batteries from EVs. According to Altilium, this technology has been independently validated by the University of Plymouth and proven in a scaled-up pilot operation, recovering over 95 per cent of cathode metals from waste EV batteries, in a format that can be directly reused in battery manufacturing.

By recovering these metals for reuse in new batteries, Altilium claims it can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 74 per cent and cut costs by 20 per cent, compared to mined raw materials.