POSCO Holdings Inc., South Korea’s leading steelmaker, said Sunday it has built a secondary battery recycling plant in the southwestern city of Suncheon as part of its push to expand its battery materials business.
The plant will be operated by POSCO HY Clean Metal — the joint venture between POSCO Holdings, GS Energy Corp. and China’s Huayou Cobalt — which specializes in lithium-ion battery materials and new cobalt materials, at Yulchon Industrial Complex in Suncheon, about 290 kilometers south of Seoul.
The plant has an annual capacity of processing 12,000 tons of black mass, the powdery faction that contains 2,500 tons of nickel, 800 tons of cobalt and 2,500 tons of lithium carbonate, ingredients for secondary batteries.
The black mass, which comes from scraps and used batteries, will be produced at POSCO Holdings’ recycling plant built in Poland.
The Poland Legnica Sourcing Center in Brzeg Dolny, some 30 kilometers northwest of Warsaw, can process 7,000 tons of scraps and used batteries per year to produce black mass.
POSCO Holdings said what it calls an “eco-friendly resource recycling system” will be able to minimize the emission of carbon dioxide from the material production process, such as mining, and reduce the production cost of batteries.
The metals produced at the Yulchon factory will be sent to a nearby factory of POSCO Future M Co., which produces cathode material, according to POSCO Holdings. POSCO Future M is the chemical materials unit of POSCO Holdings Inc.
Source: Yonhap News Agency