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Construction is scheduled to begin in November 2023 with completion in January 2025
US-based Ascend Elements is teaming up with South Korea’s SK Ecoplant and its electronic waste recycling subsidiary, TES, to build a $65 million lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery-recycling facility in Hopkinsville, Ky., Ascend Elements announced September 26.
The company said that the upcoming recycling facility will be spread across an area of 100,000 square feet. The battery-recycling plant will be able to disassemble and shred approximately 24,000 metric tons of used electric vehicle batteries and gigafactory scrap per year, which is estimated to be approximately 56,000 EV batteries per year, it said, adding that the construction is scheduled to begin in November 2023 with completion in January 2025.
Notably, SK Ecoplant will own 64% in the joint venture with Ascend Elements, which is slated to own 25% stake. The remaining 11% stake will be owned by TES.
Since 2022, SK Ecoplant has invested more than $60 million in Ascend Elements, the company said in its note.
“We are honored to deepen our relationship with SK [Ecoplant] on this new, state-of-the-art EV battery recycling facility,” said Mike O'Kronley, CEO of Ascend Elements. “This is just the beginning of an entirely new industry in the United States. For every new EV battery gigafactory that is built, we will need to build a new battery recycling facility to process manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries. This is a capital intensive endeavor, so joint ventures between strategically aligned partners is an ideal way to fund new infrastructure projects.”
Significance: According to the company, the new battery-recycling facility will create approximately 60 jobs and produce about 12,000 metric tons of black mass per year. Black mass is a fine powder that contains the valuable cathode and anode materials inside an EV battery. The black mass that will be produced at the planned new SK Ecoplant-Ascend Elements facility will help supply Ascend Elements' nearby Apex 1 engineered battery-materials facility, which is currently under construction in Hopkinsville.
The plant is expected to be operational in 2024, by when it is expected that the $1 billion Apex 1 project will be North America's first sustainable cathode precursor (pCAM) and cathode active material (CAM) manufacturing facility. At full capacity, the massive Apex 1 project will produce enough pCAM for approximately 750,000 new EVs per year.
Ascend Elements recently closed a $542 million funding round and received $480 million of US Energy Department (DOE) grant awards to accelerate construction of the Apex 1 project. Ascend Elements also operates Base 1, one of North America's largest EV battery-recycling facilities in Covington, Ga.
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