Recently, Marc Grynberg, CEO of Belgian Materials Technology Inc., said that in order to adapt to the rapid development of the electric vehicle market, the company plans to increase investment in electric vehicle battery recycling capacity in the next decade.
The International Energy Agency estimates that by 2030, the number of electric vehicles on the global road will be about 40 times that of 2017, resulting in a significant increase in the number of recyclable waste batteries.
Marc Grynberg said at a news conference, 'We plan to make investment choices and decisions in the next five years, because we must be ready to build a larger industrial recycling facility around 2025. At present, our recycling capacity of used batteries is About 7,000 tons, equivalent to recycling 150,000-200,000 electric car batteries, and the sales of electric cars and plug-in electric cars are expected to exceed 2 million this year.
In June of this year, Berenberg analysts said that Umicore is expected to invest 280 million euros in battery recycling facilities by 2020-2021. By 2025, Umicore will occupy the electric car battery recycling market by three-thirds. One share. Umicore said it would not comment on the above forecast. It is too early to disclose any investment amount.
Grynberg also said that the so-called 'secondary battery' application, the re-use of electric vehicle batteries for home and office power storage, will not have any impact on battery recycling needs. 'Second battery applications will be in the field of residential energy storage. A niche application, because economically, it does not apply to utility-scale energy storage projects, nor to grid regulation.