Gravita India expands lead battery processing capacity in Chittoor

Gravita India said on May 26 it had expanded lead battery recycling capacity at its Chittoor plant from 26,440 metric tonnes a year to 64,640 MTPA.

The increase takes the group’s overall recycling capacity to more than 278,000 MTPA — putting Gravita on course to hit its overall target of 425,000 MTPA by fiscal 2026.

Gravita invested around Rs21 crore ($2.4 million) in the Chittoor expansion project.

Expanding recycling capacity means Gravita is poised to manage an expected surge in demand for recycling, as manufacturers and importers of new batteries respond to extended producer responsibility requirements under Indian battery waste management regulations introduced in 2022. The regulations are also designed to stamp out unregulated/informal battery recycling.

Meanwhile, Chittoor has a range of contracts in place to take battery scrap from major telecoms players, OEMs and the auto sector originating from across India.

Chittoor’s proximity to the port of Chennai, about 150km to the east, will help Gravita strengthen its presence in the southern Indian and southeast Asian markets, the company said.

Separately, Gravita said on May 24 its Tanzania subsidiary had started commercial

Hoppecke in Li recycling agreement with Huayou

Hoppecke is to work with China’s Huayou Recycling Technology on lithium ion battery recycling development, the companies announced on May 16.

The Germany-based lead battery company has signed a memorandum of understanding with Huayou, a subsidiary of Huayou Cobalt.

Details of the agreement were not disclosed, but Hoppecke said the move aimed to “create future solutions for a circular economy for lithium ion batteries”.

Hoppecke said it was the first European company with which Huayou had agreed a cooperation deal.

Hoppecke said it aimed to use its expertise to support future lithium battery recycling, which it said was “significantly more complex and complicated” than with lead acid batteries.

In January, Hoppecke announced that its newly launched batteries production plant in Poland secured ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 certification for quality and environmental management. production and recycling of waste rubber. Pyrolysis oil generated during the process would be used as an alternative source of energy to support its lead and aluminium recycling.

Poznan is home to the manufacture of Hoppecke’s latest pure lead AGM batteries series, where production was launched in spring 2022.

In May 2022, Gravita un- veiled similar plans for a waste rubber operation at its plant in Ghana.

The company has not given details of how it would further refine the pyrolysis oil from the recycling operations.

Study to consider switch from lead to Li processing at Glencore’s Portovesme

Lead and zinc processing at Glencore’s Portovesme subsidiary in Italy could be replaced with a lithium ion battery recycling operation in partnership with Li-Cycle, the companies revealed on May 9.

The announcement came just weeks after Batteries International reported that a review into the future of lead smelting and refining at Portovesme was underway.

Glencore and Canadabased Li-Cycle have signed a letter of intent to jointly study the feasibility of — and later develop — a hub facility at Portovesme to produce materials including nickel, cobalt and lithium from recycled batteries.

The definitive feasibility study will start mid-2023 and should be completed by mid-2024.

Subject to a final investment decision, the partners say construction of the hub could follow with commissioning in late 2026 to early 2027.

Glencore’s global head of recycling Kunal Sinha said if the repurposing of the site goes ahead, Portovesme would become the group’s first facility to produce battery-grade lithium.

This will enable Glencore to “truly close the loop for our European OEM and gigafactory customers across all aspects of the supply chain,” he said.

The two companies have not said whether existing lead and zinc smelting operations could continue at Portovesme alongside the lithium recycling hub.

Sunlight plant set to double lead recycling

The Sunlight Group is to further invest to ramp up lead battery recycling at its operation in northeastern Greece, CEO Lampros Bisalas told the country’s Delphi Economic Forum on May 2.

Bisalas said the company plans to gradually double lead production at the Komotini plant from the current 50,000 tonnes annually.

Meanwhile, Sunlight is on course to launch a lithium battery recycling plant within the next three years on the back of a €30 million ($32 million) investment by the company, plus a €3.5 million contribution from the European Union.

“We’re in the process of developing the relevant (lithium recycling) technology,” Bisalas said.

Sunlight is also setting up a prototype lithium ion battery cells production plant at its headquarters in Xanthi.

Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis praised Sunlight as a global leader in the energy sector when he visited the Xanthi site on April 27.

Mitsotakis said it was exciting to see Greek companies “excelling abroad and dominating markets”.