Circular economy comes to Teesside with new EV recycling plant to create hundreds of jobs

An EV battery recycling plant to be based on Teesside will create between 100-200 jobs locally by 2025.

Global firm Altilium Metals, the UK’s leader in EV recycling, intends to create a huge facility on Teesside which will transform battery waste from more than 150,000 electric vehicles into ‘cathode active material’ – a key component of new batteries.

The plant would create 100 to 200 high-value jobs by 2025 as well as hundreds more during the construction phase, which is expected to take 18 months to complete.

Altilium Metals recently won £3m in UK Government innovation funding to scale up its process to extract the metals from spent batteries, supporting an EV supply chain and circular economy.

That development will improve the carbon footprint of the products while also bringing down the manufacturing costs.

Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen said: “Electric vehicles have a big role to play in our low-carbon future, but there are still significant advances that need to be made to ensure their production is as clean and efficient as possible.

“Altilium Metals’ recycling technology can help play a massive part in this and I’m delighted to learn of its plans to come to our region.

“We’re seeing a lot of activity in EV innovation here, with other plans for lithium plants for battery production moving on swiftly.

“This latest announcement will help cement our expertise and status as a fantastic place to do business, helping to attract more ground-breaking firms in the cleaner, safer and healthier industries of tomorrow, while creating hundreds more good-quality, well-paid jobs.”

A decision on the final Teesside location of the plant is expected to be made early in 2023.

With the UK banning the sale of petrol and diesel cars in 2030, it is estimated that EV use could generate more than 11 million tonnes of battery waste annually by the end of the decade – enough to fill Wembley Stadium almost 20 times every year.

Altilium CEO Kamran Mahdavi said: “We are excited to announce Teesside as the preferred location for Altilium Metal’s first UK recycling plant, as we scale up our technology to help meet the growing demand for critical metals and move towards a circular economy for the battery value chain.

“The significant volume of end-of-life batteries and scrap from giga-factories expected in the UK requires mega-scale recycling solutions and we look forward to demonstrating the process at scale here on Teesside.

“Until recently, lithium-ion batteries were regarded as hazardous waste, but they can actually serve as valuable sources of raw materials – such as lithium, nickel and cobalt.

“Recycling, or “urban mining”, will play an important role in making sure these valuable metals are returned to the supply chain in the most environmentally friendly way, rather than ending up as landfill waste.”