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Posco Hy Clean Metal, a joint venture between Posco Holdings and Huayou Cobalt, celebrated on Sunday the 7th July the inauguration of the company's new 12,000 tpa material recovery plant for lithium-ion battery waste. The plant has a capacity to produce 12,000 tonnes of nickel sulphate, 4,000 tonnes of cobalt sulphate and 2,500 tonnes of lithium carbonate.
The initial source of materials is coming from the joint venture's plant in Poland where production scrap from LG Energy Solution's plant is processed. Feedstock is also expected to come from POSCO's partnership with GS Energy Materials (formerly Enerma) through wich EV batteries are to be collected in South Korea.
Meanwhile GS Energy Materials is investing more than 150 Bn won ($115M) in another material recovery plant in the same location as POSCO with a 20,000 tpa capacity of black mass and similar capacity for pre-processing. The pre-processing plant will come on line already in 2023 and thus contributing to POSCO Hy Clean Metal's now opened recovery plant.
POSCO and Huyaou Cobalt announced in May that the two companies have agreed to jointly invest 1.2trn won ($910m) in a precursor plant in Pohang which will increase Posco’s global precursor production capacity to 440,000 tons per year from the current 150,000. Through this plant the two companies will be able to supply their cathode plants around the world with precursor, and through the recycling facility they can also supply recycled content.