UK: Circular Economy for Battery Metals

By its own account, London-based Technology Minerals Ltd will be the UK’s first listed company to create a circular economy for battery metals within a singular company.

It would also be the first and only UK company to extract the raw materials required for Li-ion battery cathodes; recycling them for use by battery manufacturers. In March, the firm announced that its subsidiary, Recyclus Group, has signed a deal with a UK lead-acid battery-recycling group.

This new alliance would deliver a recycling process “that will ensure no parts go to landfill, in an industry that has traditionally caused harm to the environment by incinerating parts or sending them to landfill”. Spent batteries would produce 18,000 tons of pollution each year in the UK. As emphasized, this deal will help to provide new technical processes, “where parts will be desulphurized to make the lead eligible for reuse – in turn, cutting slag waste by 90 percent”. This collaboration would help to accelerate the battery market towards a much more sustainable future. “As electric vehicles (EVs) replace the internal combustion engine, the strain on the battery metals industry will be enormous – so much so, the metal and mineral demand for the EV industry is expected to double that of consumer electronics,” the company stated.

www.TechnologyMinerals.co.uk, www.recyclusgroup.com

(Published in GLOBAL RECYCLING Magazine 2/2021, Page 48)