Poland’s Elemental has opened Europe’s first large-scale lithium-ion battery recycling plant in Zawiercie. The plant is seen as a European leader and is designed to become a zero-emission facility in the next few years. The idea behind the investment is to keep the Asian-made batteries in Europe and significantly shorten the recycling process and secure supply chains.

Until that moment only copper, aluminium and plastic were recovered from batteries in factories that operate in Europe. The so-called “black mass” that contains the most valuable minerals was sold to companies in China, Korea, Canada or the USA. Thanks to the new plant in Zawiercie, lithium will be recovered in Poland, but the company also wants to invest in an installation for the recovery of nickel, manganese and cobalt. 

Lithium-ion batteries are usually used in cars for no more than 15 years, after which they can still serve as stationary energy storage for another five to 10 years, but after about 20 years most of them have to undergo recycling.

Poland now joins countries such as China or the US that will be able to recycle these materials on its own. 

The company will initially process 4,000 tonnes of lithium-ion cells (probably from electric cars in the future) and 6,000 tonnes per year of catalytic converters from scrapped internal combustion vehicles.

“We will process catalysts or concentrates from 77 of our plants around the world. The palladium, platinum and rhodium extracted here each year would fit on two and a half euro pallets, but their value will reach around 5 billion dollars. 60 tonnes of these materials will represent 10% of their global market,” said Paweł Jarski, founder and president of the Elemental Holding Group

Photo: Tesla Polska/Facebook, Bartosz Żołnierczyk, Dziennik Zachodni

Tomasz Modrzejewski