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- Ascend Elements and Elemental Strategic Metals establish Polish EV battery recycling joint venture, ‘AE Elemental’
Ascend Elements and Elemental Strategic Metals establish Polish EV battery recycling joint venture, ‘AE Elemental’
Elemental Strategic Metals and Ascend Elements have established Elemental, a joint venture to recycle EV batteries.
The companies will co-own and operate the recycling facility in Zawiercie, Poland. The facility will disassemble, discharge, and shred EV batteries to produce black mass, a material that can be used to create new engineered EV battery materials, including cathode active material (CAM) and cathode precursor (pCAM). The facility can recycle up to 12,000 metric tons of batteries per year, or approximately 28,000 EV batteries annually.
The joint venture partners have agreed to invest in large-scale lithium extraction from black mass, with extraction capabilities processing up to 20,000 metric tons of black mass per year. Construction is set to begin in Fall 2024, with operations commencing in 2026.
In addition, the companies plan to construct a new EV battery recycling facility in central Germany. The AE Elemental facility in Germany will have the capacity to recycle up to 25,000 metric tons of batteries per year, or approximately 58,000 EVs annually.