Novel car battery recycling factory set to strengthen raw material re-use in Germany

With the official opening of a battery recycling plant in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, carmaker Mercedes-Benz plans to recover raw materials such as lithium, nickel and cobalt from old electric car batteries. "This brings us a step closer to the circular economy, increases our independence from raw materials and demonstrates the innovative strength of our company and our industry," Mercedes-Benz head Ola Källenius said during the opening ceremony.

The factory is Europe's first plant to use a so-called integrated mechanical-hydrometallurgical process, which allows for a recycling rate of over 96 percent, public broadcaster ARD reported. Conventional battery recycling processes generally recover around 70 percent of materials. The recovered materials are set to be enough for the production of more than 50,000 battery modules for new Mercedes-Benz models.

"This factory, unique in Europe, shows how much potential there is in our country, how many good ideas are created and quickly turned into reality," said chancellor Olaf Scholz, who attended the opening ceremony. "If we want to build the world's best cars in Germany in the future – which we can – then Germany must be a leading market for new technologies."

Germany's huge car-making industry means the country faces a big challenge to ensure that the resources needed on the way to clean mobility do not cause social and environmental damage. Recently, researchers from the German Economic Institute (IW) said that the longevity of electric car batteries will cause a scarcity of recycled raw materials - recycled lithium and cobalt in particular are likely to become scarce - making some of the EU’s targets for battery recycling unrealistic, such as the one stipulating that from 2036 at least 26 percent of cobalt in every battery must be recycled.