Veolia expands battery recycling hubs: ‘This is only the beginning’

Society and industry need better battery recycling solutions, insists Jean-François Nogrette, director-general of Veolia France & special waste Europe, during the annual International Battery Recycling Congress in Salzburg.

Can you update us on Veolia’s hazardous waste activities and battery recycling?

‘Veolia has been involved in hazardous waste management for 50 years and it’s now core and one of our fastest-growing activities with important expansion in Europe, Asia and North America. It’s the reason why battery recycling is not a brand-new topic for us. We started to work on the recycling of alkaline batteries 30 years ago to leverage our knowledge as the market evolves and to offer solutions for larger battery packs coming from electric vehicles.

Veolia has three operational sites in China and Europe with the capacity to process 30 000 tonnes of batteries, corresponding to approximately 100 000 EV batteries. That is only the beginning and the group has the ambition to become a leader in this market with five other sites planned in different regions over the next few years.’

How important is battery recycling?

‘I’d say it is essential. For three main reasons:

• First, the battery is one of the major contributors to the environmental footprint of an electric vehicle. Recycling is a key benefit to drastically reducing this footprint and realising the full benefits of decarbonising electric mobility.
• In the long term, resource supply may become an issue in some territories, depending on geopolitical fluctuations. Developing recycling programmes can reduce our dependence by increasing self-sufficiency in strategic metals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt.
• Finally, batteries can be a threat to the environment and the people who handle them, as they contain chemicals and are highly flammable. Proper management of their recycling is essential to avoid accidents and mitigate any form of risk.’

What is Veolia bringing to the table?

‘We are working closely with our partners to close the loop in their supply chain, to comply with future regulations and to develop a secure and local procurement of raw materials. The security of a proven process includes not only robustness and tolerance to variability but also operator safety.

We have what we call a “glocal” network. This means that, wherever you are in the world, we are committed to the quality of our local services and the deployment of the associated workforce, pooling activities to further reduce transportation and processing costs.

Moreover, we have ongoing R&D projects, carried out in-house or with partners like Solvay. This work ensures the continuous improvement of recycling processes and technologies. Our partnerships, whether in the form of strategic alliances, joint ventures, or otherwise, are built on trust and transparency to deliver real results.’

What are the opportunities for growth?

‘Our first-of-a-kind industrial scale hydrometallurgical plant will start operating next year, allowing us to expand and offer a wide range of services, from battery disassembly to high grade metallic salt production.

Gigafactories will probably be the first to need important recycling capacities due to the large amount of scraps coming from the battery production processes. A strong relationship with those companies is therefore important to scale up the activity before the arrival of larger volumes from end-of-life electric vehicles.’

What are the main issues you’re facing?

‘The biggest challenge for the recycling industry will be to meet the strong regulatory requirements. We are working to ensure that our processes comply with regulatory evolution and that our recycled products will be perfectly suitable for new battery production.’

How do you see the future?

‘The challenge is to keep pace with manufacturers’ innovations. The materials used to design the batteries for tomorrow’s electric vehicles will have to be increasingly efficient in terms of quality and vehicle range. Manufacturers must constantly renew their products so we must continuously reinvent our know-how to enhance the end-of-life value of these batteries. We are ready to take up this challenge to make electric mobility ever more sustainable.’