Canadian Firm Begins Battery Recycling in Germany’s East

The initial capacity is 10,000 tons of material annually. But the company intends to double that amount by the end of 2023 and triple it by 2024.

The facility is one of the largest of its kind in Germany, rivaled only by the Primobius plant in the western town of Hilchenbach and the BASF plant planned for next year in eastern locality of Schwarzheide. 

The new facility marks Li-Cycle’s entry into the European market. “Germany is one of the epicenters in Europe for the production of lithium-ion batteries and the automotive sector in general,” Li-Cycle co-founder Tim Johnston told business newspaper Handelsblatt. “That motivated us to accelerate and expand the construction of our plant in Magdeburg.”

Li-Cycle says that the plant will use a special hydrometallurgic procedure to separate lithium as well as copper, nickle and cobalt from the “black mass,” i.e. shredded materials, of spent batteries.