Once the plant is in full operation, it will be capable of processing 1,000 mt/year of batteries by 2024, the company told S&P Global Platts.

This would represent about 20% of the UK's end-of-life EV batteries in 2024, which Warwick University estimates to be in the region of 5,000 mt.

The UK was predicted to have 350,000 mt of these batteries by 2040, Veolia said in the statement.

The plant, which will be constructed in Minworth, West Midlands, is to enter operations by the third quarter of 2022 at low levels of capacity, the spokesman said in an email to Platts.

The plant will both discharge and dismantle batteries before completing the mechanical and chemical separation recycling processes.

While not providing the exact amount of investment, the spokesperson said the plant had an initial small investment to get up and running based on the discharging and dismantling, and once the best practices for the following processes were confirmed, Veolia hoped to invest more.

By recycling battery materials, Veolia hopes to cut water use, which is intensive in traditional lithium mining, and up to 50% of greenhouse gas emissions from battery production.

”A significant portion of the materials needed to produce batteries use conventional water and energy-intensive processes. It takes an estimated 500,000 gallons of water to extract 1 mt of lithium with this type of mining,” the company wrote in the statement.

A key step toward sustainability

Gavin Graveson, Veolia senior executive vice president, Northern Europe zone, said in the statement that recycling was a key step in the UK achieving an ethical and sustainable battery supply chain.

“We will not achieve carbon-neutrality without greatly expanding the investment in and development of new technologies and recycling opportunities. As the demand for EVs rises, we'll need this sort of facility - and more like it in the UK - if we are to avoid hitting a resource crisis in ten years," he said.

Veolia also plans to leverage its worldwide network to build out a complete circular economy offering over the next five years to make battery precursors on the European continent, it said.

The company already has one partnership, signed in March 2021, with French automaker Renault via its consortium with Solvay, which aims to create a secure, sustainable source of supply for battery minerals, including cobalt, nickel, and lithium.

“We are studying the most proper ways to conduct battery precursors (returning the end-of-job batteries to pure enough materials to do so in battery production) and expect this can be performed and be performed in Europe,” the spokesperson said in comments to Platts.