SK Ecoplant TES Surpasses 6,000 Tons in Spent Battery Recycling

SK ecoplant announced on the 16th that the amount of waste batteries processed by TES-AMM (TES), a subsidiary specializing in waste battery recycling, has surpassed 6,000 tons.

Considering that the weight of lithium batteries installed in mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops is typically around 50g, TES has effectively recycled waste batteries from 120 million mobile devices. The recovery rate of raw materials such as lithium and cobalt during the processing is about 92%, and the purity of the recovered rare metals reaches approximately 99%.

The cumulative amount of lithium batteries processed by TES, a subsidiary of SK Ecoplant, has surpassed 6,000 tons. Workers at TES's Singapore facility are inspecting the recycling equipment for waste batteries. (Photo by SK Ecoplant)

TES operates waste battery recycling facilities in Singapore, Shanghai in China, and Grenoble in France. It is also about to complete electric vehicle waste battery processing facilities being established in Rotterdam, Netherlands, one of the largest ports in Europe, and in Yancheng, China, a key hub for the battery industry.

TES is a company equipped with solutions covering all aspects of the waste battery recycling process, from waste battery collection to the construction of energy storage systems (ESS) using waste batteries and the extraction of rare metals. In particular, TES holds more than 30 'Basel Permits.' According to the Basel Convention, which aims to prevent illegal transboundary movements of waste, permission is required to send waste batteries collected worldwide to recycling facilities in other countries.

TES has accumulated experience in recycling small batteries and is garnering expectations for entering the large-capacity electric vehicle waste battery market in the future.

Park Kyung-il, President of SK ecoplant, stated, "SK ecoplant and TES have established regional bases in key battery industry hubs and major regions with high electric vehicle adoption in North America, Europe, and Asia, securing capabilities to respond to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the European Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA)." He emphasized, "Our ultimate goal is to realize a circular economy by completing a closed-loop system that reinserts rare metals recovered from waste batteries back into battery manufacturing."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.