The metallurgy group Eramet and environmental services provider Suez have selected the location for their future recycling centre for lithium-ion electric vehicle batteries. The industrial complex is to be built in the port of Dunkirk in northern France and will consist of an upstream dismantling plant and a downstream metal extraction plant, the two companies announced today.
The final investment decision for the project is still pending. It is expected "by the end of 2023 for the upstream plant, with a target start-up in 2025, and by the end of 2024 for the downstream plant, with a target start-up in 2027", according to the project partners. A pilot plant to test and validate the refining process on a pre-industrial scale is about to be put into operation at Eramet's research center in Trappes near Paris.
Eramet reports that has received a grant from the European Union and the French public sector investment bank BPI totalling €80m "in order to finance pre-industrialisation studies, plant construction and operating costs for the first ten years of operation". The total investment volume for the joint project was not disclosed.
Eramet and Suez launched a joint research project on recycling lithium-ion batteries (LIB) from electric vehicles called "ReLieVe" in 2019 together with BASF and announced they would cooperate to implement an industrial-scale project in 2022....
