Eramet, Suez pick battery recycling site in France

French companies Eramet and Suez have selected the French port city of Dunkirk as the site of their planned electric vehicle (EV) battery recycling plant, known as ReLieVe.

Eramet, a mining, metals and battery company, and waste, recycling and environmental services provider Suez say the proposed Dunkirk industrial complex will recycle an anticipated future stream of end-of-life EV lithium-ion batteries.

“This project will enable the strategic metals used in batteries to be recycled in a closed loop, helping to secure the metal supplies needed for Europe’s energy transition,” the companies say.

ReLieVe plans in Dunkirk call for an upstream dismantling plant and a downstream metal extraction plant. If a final investment decision for the project is made later this year, Eramet says the upstream plant would then have a target startup date in 2025, while the downstream plant is in line for a targeted startup in 2027.

“The progress of the ReLieVe project confirms our desire to move forward with the creation of a battery recycling sector in France,” Eramet CEO Christel Bories says. “New ‘urban’ mines are being set up on European territory: as a responsible mining player, our role is to develop this resource and give it a second life, with a considerably reduced environmental impact.”

“With the rise of the EV market, the recycling of used batteries is becoming a key issue in the circular economy," Suez CEO Sabrina Soussan adds. "As a leader in [the] waste sector, Suez provides innovative and resilient solutions to limit the consumption of virgin raw materials and secure supplies of secondary raw material.”

Eramet says a pilot plant to test and validate the planned refining process on a preindustrial scale is about to be put into operation at an Eramet research center in France.

As planned, the upstream facility will engaged in battery dismantling and produce black mass, with a processing capacity of 50, 000 tons of battery modules per year, the equivalent of 200,000 electric car batteries.

The downstream hydrometallurgy plant will be designed to extract and refine nickel, cobalt and lithium contained in the black mass, preparing materials suitable to be used in new batteries.

Suez will be involved in the collection, sorting, preparation, dismantling and recycling of materials from end-of-life EV batteries while Eramet is responsible for the development of hydrometallurgical technology to recycle the metals from black mass.

The companies say Dunkirk is within a “battery valley” region that is emerging in France. Several battery production plants (gigafactories) are due to open in the region over the next few years, according to Eramet.

Eramet has received an $85 million grant from the European Union and the BPIFrance public investment bank to help finance the preindustrialization studies, plant construction and operating costs for the first 10 years of the ReLieVe facility’s operation.