Huayou Recycling to invest $31M in 30,000 tpa LFP recycling facility in Yulin, Guangxi

Huayou Recycling, the battery recycling arm of Huayou Cobalt will invest 222M RMB ($30.6M) in a new recycling plant in Longtan Industrial Park in the city of Yulin in the Guangxi province. The project which broke ground the 6th of April, includes both pre-processing and material recovery will produce a lithium solution and battery grade iron phosphate.

In June 2023 Huyou Cobalt inaugurated its first lithium salt production in Longtan Industrial Park, a facilithy with capacity of 50,000 tonnes of lithium salts per year. This project, with an investment of 2.1Bn RMB ($290M), took 9 months to complete.

The recycling plant which can be expected to be operational in 2026 will recover lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries and scrap from LFP production. The end products will be lithium solution for further refinement in the company's lithium plant, battery grade iron phosphate, sponge copper and crude graphite.

Huayou Reycling which was one of the first five recycling companies to enter the so called white list for approved recyclers for EV batteries. The company, which through its parent company is one of the largest cobalt miners in the world, is one of the most internationally focused Chinese battery material companies and a key supplier to LG Energy Solutions and LG Chem. In Europe Huayou owns a pre-processing facility in Poland in a joint venture with cathode producer POSCO and is building a cathode plant in Hungary for NMC materials. In cooperation with LG Chem it is also buidling a LFP cathode plant in Morocco.