Sungeel Hitech to build its 3rd plant in Europe

South Korean specialized battery recycler Sungeel Hitech will build a 20,000 tpa pre-processing plant in Poland to process production scrap from LG Energy Solutions. The plant will be built in Bukovice, 38 km from Wrocław, the capital of Silesia Province in southern Poland. The establishment is however still subject to authorities' approval.

Sungeel has been trying to set up a Polish plant for almost a year, first in village Złotoryja, but had to abandon the plans due to local protests. The Zlotoryja project was planned together with POSCO, which also has recycling joint venture with Huayou Cobalt which is active in Poland. This time it however appears as Sungeel will not have any other partner than its customer LG Energy Solutions.

So far scrap from LG's plant has been processed by several different recyclers. Royal Bee has processed dry anode scrap while Umicore has processed cathode scrap. In 2021 Ecopro won a 4 year supply contract with LG under which it sends material to its new plant in South Korea to re-process the scrap to battery materials. POSCO is also taking scrap under a similar contract.

The new Sungeel plant is presumed to have a capacity of 20,000 tpa as that was the planned capacity in Zlotoryja. That would take Sungeel's capacity to 55,000 tonnes (on cell level) in Europe.

Except for Royal Bee, which is a homegrown recycler in Poland, and the other Korean recyclers, Elemental Holding is about to set up a pre-processing plant. The company revealed that it is about to install a system from URT, the equipment manufacturer supplying the mechanical separation line for Volkswagen.