Hyundai Motor Group and Huayou Recycling Partner to Establish EV Battery Circular Economy in Indonesia

Hyundai Motor Group is partnering with Zhejiang Huayou Recycling Technology (Huayou Recycling) to establish an electric vehicle (EV) battery circular economy in Indonesia.

On March 12, Hyundai Motor Group announced that it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Huayou Recycling, a subsidiary of global No. 1 cobalt producer Huayou Cobalt, which is responsible for battery reuse and recycling. The agreement aims to establish an EV battery circular economy in Indonesia, and the signing took place at Hyundai Motor Group’s Yangjae headquarters.

The ceremony was attended by Jeong Ho-geun, Executive Vice President and Head of Future Strategy at Hyundai Motor Group, and Bao Wei, CEO of Huayou Recycling, as well as other officials from both companies.

Hyundai Motor Group CI.

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The battery circular economy is a key element in responding to increasingly stringent global environmental regulations. It refers to an ecosystem in which waste (scrap) generated during the battery production process and end-of-life EV batteries are recycled into new batteries.

In this process, the collected scrap and batteries are dismantled and crushed to produce "black mass" in the pre-treatment stage. The post-treatment stage involves extracting key minerals from the black mass to create new raw materials. Black mass is a black powder physically produced by shredding spent batteries, and it contains various minerals, making it an intermediate product in the battery recycling process.

Under this MOU, the two companies will collect battery scrap generated at HLI Green Power, the battery cell joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution located in Indonesia, and pre-process it into black mass at Huayou Recycling’s local facility.

With the increasing use of recycled minerals in the EV battery production process, ensuring a stable recycling value chain has become more important. To address this, the two companies are considering expanding the scope of cooperation to include broader aspects of the EV battery circular economy, such as recycling end-of-life batteries in the future.

A Hyundai Motor Group official stated, “This MOU is the first step toward establishing a circular economy that encompasses the entire battery lifecycle,” adding, “We will continue our efforts to build a sustainable battery supply chain.”

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