Fortune Minerals : COBALT NEWS

Bloomberg - January 21, 2021

Dismantling them to recover cobalt, lithium, and nickel could limit the environmental impact of car manufacturing. But for now it's still a ...

, particularly in Congo, where some cobalt mines have been accused of using child labor. Europe and China require battery producers or the

Several entrepreneurs have begun pulling those batteries out of the pile, cracking them open, and cooking them down to recover cobalt, lithium, nickel, and other raw ingredients that can be recycled almost endlessly. It's an expensive and laborious endeavor-like building an EV was 20 years ago. It's also on the cusp of massive growth…Redwood, along with Canada startup Li-Cycle, is joining existing recyclers such as Belgian chemicals giant Umicore and China's GEM, which has automated disassembly lines for spent packs. Battery warranties on EVs typically cover 8 to 10 years; on the first wave of models, they're just expiring…In 2030 the world's drivers and fleets are expected to buy almost 26 million electric vehicles a year, and junkyards will take in almost 1.7 million metric tons in scrapped batteries, according to BloombergNEF. By then, recyclers should be producing tens of thousands of tons of metals to feed back into battery production, including 125,000 tons of nickel. Although that will be less than 10% of forecast battery sector demand for the metal, it could help ease automakers' concerns over potential supply crunches…For now, collecting, transporting, and stripping down EV packs to recover metals is mostly a money-losing endeavor, and it could be decades before the U.S. and Europe have enough used cells to challenge nations such as China…Raw materials account for only $2,000 to $3,000 of the cost of an average $14,000 battery pack, according to BNEF. And volatile commodity prices make it tough to predict recovered metals' value…Redwood is able to sell some materials at a profit now, Straubel says. Others are making money, too, such as Brunp, the recycling unit of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd... 'At the end of the day, battery recycling needs to be profitable,' says Jeff Spangenberger, director of the initiative. 'Economies of scale are really going to help, but right now there are a lot of batteries out there that cost money to recycle.'