Battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL) is looking to establish a $5 billion battery material recycling facility in the Chinese province of Hubei.
The company has confirmed that it will establish a joint venture with Hubei Yihua Chemical Industry Co Ltd and invest up to 32 billion yuan ($4.96 billion) in the construction of the factory. The facility will have a focus on recycling precious earth materials such as cobalt and lithium.
Reuters reports this announcement comes on the back of China setting standards and policies to promote battery recycling across the industry.
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CATL supplies companies such as Tesla, NIO, and Volkswagen with battery cells. In fact, most of the Tesla models produced at its Gigafactory in Shanghai use CATL cells.
The battery giant is continuing to grow its battery cell production capacity and recently announced plans to raise 58.2 billion yuan ($9 billion) through private investments to support its expansion. It is thought that most of it will be used to increase capacity at three of its Chinese factories. CATL wants to ramp up production capacity to 1,200 GWh by 2025. Moreover, Electrek notes that CATL is also investing in new technologies, such as sodium-ion batteries.
Battery recycling is emerging to be an especially vital part of the automotive industry’s push towards electric vehicles. In September, Ford revealed it is partnering with Redwood Materials, the largest lithium-ion battery recycler in the United States. Redwood Materials claims it can recover 95 per cent of elements such as nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper from old batteries. These materials can then be reused in batteries.
