SK Ecoplant Co., the construction arm of South Korea's chip-to-battery conglomerate SK Group, said Wednesday it has completed its second battery recycling plant in China in an effort to meet rising battery demand in the automobile industry.
The second plant, located in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, is capable of processing used batteries into 2,000 tons a year of black mass, the company said in a statement. The first plant in China is located in Shanghai.
Black mass refers to electronic waste consisting of shredded end-of-life battery cells. It contains high amounts of critical battery materials, like lithium, manganese, cobalt and nickel.
Those minerals can be extracted from the black mass for reuse in new battery production.
SK Ecoplant sees the waste recycling solutions as a new growth engine as it accelerates its transition into green businesses.
The company currently operates 50 battery recycling plants in 23 countries, including the United States, Singapore, China, Germany and the Netherlands.
"Most of the batteries recycled at the plants are mainly from electronic products, such as handsets, laptops and personal computers. They also include 'scrap and recall' batteries from battery companies," a company spokesman said.
The company is also pushing to sign deals with automakers to obtain used batteries and recycle them into black mass, which is largely sold to materials-processing companies, he said.
SK Ecoplant plans to build a third battery recycling plant in China by the end of 2024. The third plant with an output capacity of 2,000 tons of black mass will be located near the second plant.